


Book of Revelation

by Stephquiem



Series: Going Back [12]
Category: Animorphs (TV), Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Anti-Hero, Asexual character(s), Borderline Villain Anti-Hero, Canon Bisexual Character, Dream Logic, F/M, Gen, Non-Graphic Torture, Non-binary character, Other, Other Warnings May Apply See: Notes, Plot Convenience as a Plot Device, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Insert, a family can be a teenager a parasite and a robot, ride or die shorm, the world's slowest cross-country roadtrip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:27:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22568572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stephquiem/pseuds/Stephquiem
Summary: "So, what. We're not responsible for actions we took so long as there's a reset button at some point?""Basically.""That sounds like a really bad idea, Priton.""Maybe. You think your way and I'll think mine. Let's see who drives themselves crazy first."--Takes place during #41The Familiar.
Relationships: Erek King & Original Character(s), Marco (Animorphs) & Original Character(s)
Series: Going Back [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/988983
Comments: 15
Kudos: 9





	1. Marco

_**Steph** _

_Day 1_

There was a light on when I got home. On nights when I was out late, the Chee usually left a light on, which was nice of them. I fluttered in through my open window and demorphed, feeling like I barely had energy left even for that. Not for the first time, I was grateful that I didn't have anywhere to be the next day--no school or family to wonder about me if I didn't emerge from my room for awhile. Just the Chee, who didn't have to question it, and usually wouldn't check on me unless I didn't come out before noon. Erek especially had gotten very skilled at telling the difference between "depression naps" and "I was out all night fighting aliens and am exhausted" sleeping.

When I fell, face first, into bed, I fully expected to not move for a long, long time. Mind you, it wasn't that I _forgot,_ because I remembered tonight's battle--or the end of it, anyway. I remembered the close call and most of the events afterward. But I didn't expect anything. Nothing had happened--or nothing I could remember, anyway--not long earlier, with the Drode and his offer to Jake. Jake had mentioned the Drode turning up in his bedroom awhile ago before leaving without doing much of anything. He'd almost thought it was a dream, it felt so random and pointless. 

Another reset. It felt like it had been so long since the last one--not quite two years--I'd nearly forgotten what it was like to just pass through it without remembering. It had been awfully disconcerting the first time, with the jungle, but now all I could think was how much I wish I could have forgotten our trip to the Cretaceous. 

Not that it would have mattered particularly, if I'd known to expect it. Even if I'd know to expect it, I'd have been too tired think much anyway. That night, I was so exhausted that I was asleep almost the moment my head hit the pillow...

"WAKE UP!"

I jolted upright, almost banging my head as I shot up in bed. My heart was already pounding as I tried to blink past my blurred vision. “‘What’s happening?” 

Erek was standing beside my bed, his hologram face almost bone white. “They’re coming.” He grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me from bed, making me stumble as I tried to keep up with him, moving just a little too fast. "They're _coming._ The Yeerks are coming. You have to get out of here."

“What?” I was more awake now. “But--” I thought first, instinctively, of Jake, before remembering that things were different now, that Tom was on our side, that whatever _this_ was, it wasn't what I was expecting. What I was expecting was Jake to wake up in ten years' time in New York City, in a future where the Yeerks won and nothing quite made sense, and then it was over. A strange, ultimately pointless adventure, meant just for someone else. 

_'Twas but a dream._ Yeah. Or something, anyway. 

"What am I supposed to do?" I asked Erek, even as I was already morphing Great Horned Owl.

“I don’t know," Erek said. His expression showed a lot of things--regret, concern, something that might have been panic that made me try to morph faster. "I’m sorry. But we can’t keep you safe here.” 

My mind was racing. How had we been discovered, if not through the usual way? Someone had to have been caught. Someone must have seen something. It was the only thing I could think of, and there wasn't time to ask for more details. Not as I was trying to concentrate on morphing and getting _away._

Escape first. Worry about the whys later. 

Erek moved like a blur to the window, still open from when I'd gotten home earlier that night. It was almost dawn now. As I finished my morph, I saw him check outside, that the front yard was still clear of whoever was surely coming for me. He turned back to me, waving me forward.

Now fully morphed, I hopped up on to the windowsill. <What about you? And the other Chee?>

Erek shook his head. "Don't worry about us. There's no time." 

<Erek…> I had no idea what became of the Chee in this timeline. I hadn’t even thought about it until now. I hadn’t thought I’d need to.

“It’s okay. _Go.”_

I flew out through my window, into the uncertain early morning. When I looked back, Erek was still standing at the window, but after a moment he turned and disappeared from view.

* * *

_**Priton** _

When the world was put back to rights, and I returned to the pool, I had a lot to think about. Forty days with the nearest thing I had ever had--probably would ever have--to a family was a nice diversion. Like taking your first vacation in years. But like all vacations, it had to end. There was work to be done. I had to figure out what the hell was coming next before I could get blindsided again.

It was almost a relief when woke up back in the Yeerk pool. I felt more like myself. In that other timeline, there were _bits_ missing. Bits that hadn't been mine originally, but were apart of Steph's mind. Now that I was back, they were back, too, which was at least reassuring. Whatever had been done to me hadn't made that absence permanent.

Now I had time to think, and it was easier to remember more of what Steph knew when I had part of her with me--though not nearly as easy as it would have been if I'd been in her head still, but what do you know, I'm a fucking moron--so things were a little clearer.

"Clearer" didn't mean "good." Clearer, in this case, meant getting an increasingly uneasy feeling that I might know what was coming. 

There was a little time. Not much, but enough to come up with some kind of plan. Well. "Plan" might have been an especially optimistic name for it. It was hard to plan something when there were about a million possible variables that could screw everything up at any turn. 

Mostly, the plan was to survive. Survive long enough to figure out the rest.

And then, finally, it happened. The news came through the pool that the "Andalite Bandits" had been found and were being rounded up for infestation. Suddenly it was real and it was happening, and there wasn't time to think about the ramifications of what I was going to try to do. Later, I'd have a very long time to think about exactly what I was doing. 

It was a strange feeling of giddiness pumping through me as I moved into position, hovering near the infestation pier to wait. It could all go so very badly. It _would_ go badly. It _was_ going badly. If I succeeded in this, the first foolish act in what would surely be a long, long line of foolish acts, there could still ten years of hell stretching out before me.

I had died before. I thought I could do it again. It was jarring and unsettling, but I could do it if I had to.

But someone was toying with me. Me, specifically. And I was so very, very tired of being at the whims of gods and their chess games. I didn’t want them to beat me this time.

A head plunged into the pool. I felt the familiar ripple through the murky water, “saw” the ear through my sonar. I pushed forward, ramming aside the Yeerk who was meant to take that host instead, and reached greedily with my palps into that opening, praying that it was the _right_ ear. If it wasn’t, I was dead. But if I didn’t try, I was dead anyway.

I didn’t have to worry, it turned out. This mind was familiar, I knew it before I heard his scrambling thoughts in my head. It wasn’t the same way I’d know Ben, or Steph, but still it was familiar. Like a long time friend. Like a close family member.

Like a character from a book.

<Get out!>

<Marco. Marco!> It took an extra second longer than it should have to realize my “voice” would have been wholly unfamiliar to him. <It’s Priton.>

That at least quieted him somewhat, though Marco’s thoughts were still racing. <Priton? What are you doing?>

<I have a plan.> Sort of. In progress.

In control now, I straightened up and turned, schooling my features into an impassive mask.

A woman I didn’t know stepped forward. “Visser Seventeen?”

I nodded, mentally filing the name away for later. "Yes." 

The woman gestured for me follow her, saying, "You're expected for briefing. Come with me." She turned and started walking in the direction of the Yeerk Pool offices, and I followed behind her. There was literally nothing else I could have done at that moment, with what felt like every set of eyes in the cavern trained on me. I didn't know where the others were, I didn't know where Steph was. I kept my eyes trained on the back of the person I was following, half-afraid that I'd lose my poker face if I tried to look around too much for them all right then.

< _This_ is your plan?>

<I didn’t say you’d like my plan,> I answered grimly. The plan was to survive. If surviving meant being someone else, so be it. If there was one thing a Yeerk was skilled at, it was pretending to be someone they weren’t. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a line in People Like Us where Priton off-handedly suggests that he could "steal a body." It took three years and an entirely different series, but I did eventually get around to proving that he wasn't kidding. 
> 
> Book 41 has an interesting history in Going Back. I think the general premise has remained the same over the years, but the execution has evolved over the years to accommodate its place in the series. 41 is a _weird_ book. A lot of weird shit happens in this Part because of that. Canon isn't particularly clear on what's happening in this book--it's probably a dream--Going Back is a little more explicit. It's definitely a real, alternate timeline. It's just a real alternate timeline that someone's pulling the strings. Like a nightmare version of the Sims. Or, you know, just the Sims. Anyway, why I don't usually write horror: I peaked at 13 when I came up with the most horrifying premise I could think of.
> 
> Last Part, I billed Part 12 as character study, and that's really what this is. It's less about cohesive plot--because weird shit reigns supreme in this hell universe--and more about the characters. I keep saying that's what Going Back is about, but I mean it especially here.
> 
> A fun drinking game: Either a) take a drink every time you spot something in this Part that was mentioned in a previous Part. Or b) go back through the series thus far and take a drink every time I allude to 41 itself or something in this Part specifically. 
> 
> That said, fun fact: When determining Priton's assumed identity for 41, I knew he was taking the place of Marco's Yeerk in this (because he always does) and that Marco's Yeerk was Visser Two in the book. But I also figured he probably didn't start out that way. So I made him Visser Seventeen, as a reference to Eleutherophobia by SoloMoon. _Book of Revelation_ is also at least partially inspired by my favorite "What if the Yeerks won?" fic from the late 90s, but I'll reference that when it's relevant.


	2. Erek

_**Priton** _

_Day 30_

A couple things became apparent real quick about how things were going to play out. The first was that Marco was definitely not Steph. Steph, for as often as we disagreed on things, mostly trusted my judgment when it came down to it. Or at least, was usually willing to see where I was going with an idea, anyway. Usually this meant that if things went sideways, we knew that it was entirely my stupidity that got us into the mess. Blame was clear. We both understood this. This was how we operated. 

Marco, on the other hand, had _a lot of questions_.

<Did you know to expect this?>

<Where have you been?>

<Do you actually think you can pretend to be some hotshot visser? How do you think _that's_ going to work?>

<Do you have to look through _everything_ in my head?>

He rarely asked a question that had an easy answer to it--except, perhaps, the last one. Believe it or not, I mostly couldn't help prying. If my host has a thought, I'm going to hear it. And human brains are very good at making connections between things. Noticing something small can trigger another memory, and it very easily becomes a rabbit hole to get lost in. Or at least, it does with a brand new host. Probably, it's an ingrained survival instinct. Mostly, it annoyed the hell out of whoever's head you were occupying.

All said, though, I thought that if I had to be in anyone's head for this nightmare, I was glad it was Marco's. We weren't, when you got down to it, that different. I was familiar with how his mind worked--both from Steph and from knowing him for the better part of two years--and, crucially, I knew that he could do what I could not. He could strategize without bringing emotions into it. 

All in all, if we didn't try to kill each other--or ourselves to get away from the other--in the first six months, I thought we'd probably be fine.

The second thing that became clear was that no one--at least, no one in the Empire--knew where Steph was.

Technically, no one knew where Tobias was either, but I wasn't particularly worried about Tobias. _He_ didn't have a brain full of potentially valuable information. And I had a vague idea of what was supposed to happen to him. Everything was kind of vague, really, because, you know, _I didn't think this would be real._

I didn't see the others get dragged in and infested. I didn't see whatever happened to Aftran--I saw Tom after. I had some ideas. I tried not to think about it. Resets fix everything, except the trauma of remembering them. And if I spent the next ten years finding ways to spend as little time with my former comrades as I could, well, I was a busy Yeerk. I had things to do.

And anyway, the Animorphs weren't the worst part of this. Not for me, anyway. At least with the Animorphs, I knew what to expect.

No, the worst part was the Chee.

* * *

On the one hand, logistically, I could completely understand it. When the Empire had tried to track down Steph, they'd instead found the Chee. What are you going to do with a group of super strong, super advanced alien androids? It would be a waste to destroy them--not to mention exceedingly difficult. As far as I knew, only one Yeerk knew the Chee well enough to know how to do that, and it's not like _I_ was going to tell. Not that it would've taken too many leaps to get to "fire a dracon cannon directly at them." 

Everything was happening very fast. Unnaturally fast. If you'd asked me before how long I'd have thought it would take the Empire to entirely conquer Earth, I'd probably have said years, at least the way the invasion was currently going. With Earth's population, and its defenses--not exactly on Yeerk or Andalite scale, but if the Empire could be taken down by a bunch of teenagers with access to morphing tech and a zoo, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume a few nukes would've done a similar job--it would have to take a more significant amount of time than, say, the Hork-Bajir home world. 

You could see the effects already. We weren't exactly at the stage of pools out in the open yet, but things were definitely progressing a bit too fast for what you'd expect. It was all very convenient.

More convenient still, in that first month, when the Empire was still trying to figure out how to use the Chee for forced labor when they couldn't be controlled, they got their hands on something that could feasibly change that. 

The Pemalites had been dead and gone for millennia. The chances of a Pemalite Crystal finding its way to Earth just once were miniscule. The chance of it happening _twice_ , in under three years, had to be non-existent. And yet, that was exactly what happened. How convenient. I half expected to find out the crystal came wrapped up in a pretty bow. 

It was bait. It had to be. To what end, I couldn't tell you, but I couldn't really tell you what the point of any of this was, anyway. Mental torture, maybe. Someone's sick idea of a joke, probably.

Still. I wasn't involved in the decision to buy a Pemalite Crystal off the luckiest Skrit Na in the galaxy, or in the decision to use it to reprogram the Chee, to enslave them. You couldn't infest one like you could a human, but you could still order them around pretty damn effectively.

I liked the Chee. Erek only ever tolerated me for Steph's sake, but the others had been mostly kind. They’d sheltered me. They’d kept my secrets. They’d taken care of me when they could have just as easily chosen to distance themselves.

I wasn’t heartless. Even as much as I said it didn’t matter, no one’s suffering brought me joy. There was no malice in what I did next. There was no vendetta. I was _trying_ to be kind.

I requested a personal guard. It was a perfectly reasonable request for a high-ranking visser, and the Chee were the new and exciting thing. Some probably would have argued having one was overkill for a visser who already had a morph-capable host, but none of them were in a position to stop me. That was still such a new and terrifying experience that it was probably only a matter of time before I did something stupid to out myself as a fraud. 

We were using a building downtown as what could only be described as a prison. The first floor was a laboratory--what it had been before we took control of it--while the basement level had holding cells. I wasn't entirely sure _who_ was kept in those holding cells, and I probably didn't want to know. As the elevator doors opened on that floor, I heard inhuman yowling sounds coming from behind one of the locked doors along the corridor. The sound made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

“Have you visited our facility before, Visser?” Essar Four-Five-Two asked. She was my guide that afternoon. It took me an extra second to register that she was speaking to me in Galard, as I was still so unused to hearing it. 

“No,” I said, choosing to look ahead to where we were headed rather than at any of the cells on either side of us.

Essar swiveled her reptilian-like head to look at me, smiling one of those grotesque Hork-Bajir smiles. “We’re already making great progress,” she informed me.

I nodded but said nothing. I didn’t think I wanted to hear the details.

At the end of the hall of horrors, the corridor forked. I didn’t know what was to the right, but the left corridor took us to what some smartass had dubbed “Reconditioning.”

There weren’t actually very many Chee. A hundred fifty, maybe, which I always thought seemed both like too many and too few. They hadn’t all come to Earth. Maybe the rest had stayed behind to bury their creators. Maybe they’d been destroyed, too. 

The ones that had survived to come to Earth were standing in rows. At attention, I thought, like an army carved out of steel and ivory. None of them were using holograms, so it was impossible to tell them apart. I'd spent a year living among them, but the ones I'd talked to mostly used their human avatars when interacting with me. 

Not that it really mattered. I already knew who I was here for. "Erek King."

There was a pause. Then, one Chee, about a quarter of the way down the row closest to me, stepped forward. 

“He’ll do,” I said curtly, and then turned on my heel and headed back the way I’d come. I said nothing to Essar. The nice thing about power was that my subordinates didn’t expect much respect. And power meant that I could do something like this. Claim the Animorphs’ oldest and most loyal ally, the one who let the renegade Animorph escape? That seemed exactly in line with the sort of person I was pretending to be.

I could hear Erek behind me, but neither of us spoke. I led the way back to the elevator, whose doors opened immediately when I pressed the up arrow. 

Once inside, and ostensibly alone, I began to morph. Erek didn’t react, wholly unimpressed I imagined. I suppressed a smile. I’d almost missed this.

When my face had pushed out and hardened into the osprey’s beak, I said, in thought speak, <Erek.> He didn’t react. <Erek, it’s Priton.>

Erek finally turned his head to look at me. I couldn’t read his expression when he was like this. That was probably for the best. He still said nothing, but now speaking out loud would have been a liability.

<I’ve got a job for you.>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The timeline of Going Back's development is a funny thing, because I seem to have this habit where I start writing things for a subplot before I've actually come up with said subplot. For instance, I started plotting for this Part some 18 years ago, a good two years before I worked out that GB!Steph and Priton were romantically interested in each other. Nothing really changed about this Part after I worked that out. Everything still worked in that context, which probably means I should've worked it out much earlier on, but then I couldn't laugh about it now. When we get to the most egregious examples of this, I _will_ be pointing it out. 
> 
> I'm not sure when the animosity between Priton and Erek started, only that it's existed as long as GB!Steph and Erek's friendship has, and that it existed before I decided to make 41 part of Going Back. It's complicated. It's very complicated. At any rate, it's about time I put Priton with someone who could call him out on his bullshit when he needs it (i.e. always), and here I've gone and given him _two_ people for that job. It's a big job. He's got a lot of bullshit.
> 
> I don't know how many Chee there actually are. I picked a number. I can't decide if it's too low or too high, because I feel like you could make an argument for either case. 
> 
> Also not sure if the next bit is going to be one chapter or two. I'll probably update sooner if it's two chapters, so fingers crossed there's a logical cut-off point.


	3. Steph, Part 1

_**Priton** _

_Day 77_

The first time I'd entered this room, three days after infesting Marco, I felt an inexplicable bit of deja vu. I'd never been in this particular room before, set back in the cavern of the Yeerk Pool. It couldn't have been where Visser Three fed--the steel table in the center, like something straight out of an operating room, was far too narrow to hold an Andalite--but it was a place I quickly became intimately familiar with. The hard steel table, the small, private Yeerk pool--bigger than my old portable one. The uncomfortable looking head restraint at one end of the table.

The restraint was probably overkill, to be honest. There was a Hork-Bajir guard stationed outside the door. There was always an attendant--usually a human-Controller in a white lab coat. There was always an array of three hypodermic needles. One was a tranquilizer. One was a stimulant. One I didn't know the purpose of, and had already decided I didn't want to find out.

<Are you afraid of needles?> Marco had asked as I'd very pointedly averted our gaze.

<Don't be ridiculous, of course not.> Or I hadn't been, the handful of times Ben had needed to get blood drawn. Steph hadn't been to a doctor since she left home, and we'd mostly made do with over-the-counter cold medicine and whatever Mr. King found at the pharmacy for Andalite flu. It's not like we were legally a real person and could just go to a doctor. Of course, a not insignificant difference might have also been that Ben didn't have a needle phobia--Steph did.

Of all the things to pick up from a host.

At any rate, by now, this was all very routine. I'd lie down on the hard table, keeping my eyes down and away from whatever the attendant was doing. After the first month or so, I wasn't especially worried about feeding in front of a stranger.

"Is _that_ really necessary?" the attendant asked, looking pointedly over my shoulder now as I hopped up onto the table.

I followed her gaze. Erek was standing just inside the door, at attention, his hologram face carefully blank. The effect was more than mildly uncomfortable, which was really the point. Most Chee, as far as I could tell, didn't have holograms up all the time. Or at least, if they were using one, you probably wouldn't know it. In Empire spaces, at least--and there were more and more of those now--Chee usually walked around as they naturally were. They were easier to spot that way.

Erek kept his up. I'd told him to--I needed to be able to find him quickly. It was purely practical. If it helped keep everyone else wary when I dealt with them, well, _good_. 

If it helped to keep me feeling guilty, too, well. That was probably a good thing, too.

Instead of answering, I just leveled my gaze back at the attendant, who blanched, quickly said, "Of course, Visser," before hurrying back to her table, where the usual syringes were laid out--plus one additional item that was new.

"What are those?" The attendant turned toward me at my question, so I got a better look. They looked a bit like shackles--two cuffs, connected in the middle by a solid bar--and were mostly a silvery steel, except a thin band around the cuffs that was currently glowing a faint blue.

"Oh," the attendant said, perking up almost immediately. "It's a new technology we're experimenting with. Well, not _new._ " She picked up the cuffs and held them out to me. "They are modeled after the Anti-Morphing Ray--"

"Which didn't work."

She faltered a bit, then said, "Well, we don't actually know for sure, since... since the test subject we used turned out to not be in morph at all, technically... But the other functions of the AMR worked perfectly!" she hastened to add when I just stared at her. "We are in the process of testing the possibilities of using it as a restraint for morph-capable hosts. As a simpler alternative to sedation."

< _No._ >

<No,> I agreed, firmly. We both remembered very well what the AMR's "other functions" had done to Tobias. "You're not testing those things on _me,"_ I told the attendant. "I want to still have a functioning host when I'm done feeding. Use someone else as a guinea pig."

She rushed to assure me that _of course_ , of course, I needn't worry, the cuffs weren't here for me, here, the sedative's ready, won't I get into position and we can proceed as normal?

Later, when we emerged from the room, feeling slightly queasy and tired like we did every time, instead of heading back through the main cavern to get to the exit, I turned and headed in the opposite direction. The area we were in now was mostly administrative--offices, feeding rooms like the one we just left, storage. It was quieter back here, farther away from the cages. And at certain times of the day--like now, when it was close to lunchtime and most of the people who worked in this section were instead crowding into what served as a cafeteria down here--it was also much emptier. Easier to find a bit of privacy.

When we'd reached an especially empty spot, between two storage buildings, I stopped, and, without looking back at him, held up one hand and made a gesture at Erek. A second later, the air around me shimmered, and the ever present noise of the Yeerk Pool muted to a background hum. When I turned around, I saw Erek in his true, metal form and I finally relaxed. A little, at least.

"I'm going to need to find a feeding alternative at some point," I said, leaning against the side of one of the storage buildings.

<No kidding.>

Erek didn't respond.

"Right. We'll figure something out." Maybe I could swing something more private. Without the attendant. I didn't really need one. I had Erek. This was probably the sort of thing I could demand. I was still getting used to this, where the boundaries were. I wondered if I was ever going to get used to this, or if it was always going to make my skin crawl. Part of me hoped it all still felt wrong at the end of this.

I slid down until I was squatting next to the building, my hands on my knees and my head tilted back until I was staring straight up at the cavern's ceiling. "Time?"

There was a pause, then Erek said, "A quarter past noon."

I let out a loud sigh. "It's her birthday, you know." I didn't have to clarify who I meant.

<You sure?>

I smiled, despite myself. There was an old joke there. Pity no one else would get it. "Her real one," I clarified.

Erek nodded. "Yes."

There still hadn't been any sign of Steph. Assuming she was alive. It was at least part of the reason I had Erek with me. I figured that there were probably no two people in this universe who were better equipped to find her than us. Not that I was sure that was a good idea. At all. Really, it would be better and safer for everyone if we just let it be. But I couldn't do that either--the Empire was looking for her, whether I helped or not. Maybe I could at least... mitigate things. 

The funny thing about choices is that sometimes you know it's going to end in disaster before you even do anything.

"Well, break's over." I pushed myself to my feet. "Let's get out of here."

* * *

_**Steph** _

_Day 186_

I used to have a lot of funny ideas about how things worked. I remembered in the early days, when I was surprised by something as simple as the realization that Yeerks slept--in retrospect, it was pretty damn obvious, and I could no longer remember where I'd gotten the idea that they didn't. According to Priton, sleep was a mercy.

<You wouldn't believe how boring it gets when you're asleep and I'm not,> he had said. At the time, I'd taken it as a very Priton way of saying he missed me. More likely he just wanted to complain.

I tried not to think about Priton much anymore. Or any of them. It felt safer that way.

A very long time ago--in another time and another place, when everything was still new and surprises were _good_ and _exciting_ instead of _terrifying_ and _life-altering--_ I used to think that the Hork-Bajir Valley would always be safe. Back before I knew what would actually happen to the original Hork-Bajir Valley, it made a certain amount of sense that if the Ellimist could hide it from prying eyes to begin with, he could just keep doing that indefinitely. It was a simple matter of protecting an investment.

Now, I was pretty positive that the Ellimist didn't give a damn about any of his "investments." That probably wasn't fair, and I was probably fundamentally misunderstanding something vital, but I really didn't feel up to being understanding.

The first place I headed was the woods. Probably, I should have gotten as far away as I could. I should've sought out places where the Yeerks hadn't gotten to yet, while they still existed. I should have come up with a plan. I did _try._ Those first weeks in the woods, I tried to come up with some idea besides disappearing into the wilderness and learning how to tell the difference between plants that were edible and plants that would definitely kill me if I didn't morph fast enough. Getting sick in the barn, before moving in with the Chee, had been bad enough, when I had people I could rely on and Cassie to sneak me cold medicine. Out here, if something happened I was alone and well and truly screwed.

Still, I didn't know where to go. I steered away from the familiar--I avoided Tobias' meadow and Ax's scoop and the Hork-Bajir Valley, knowing that there was no safety in those places. I thought, vaguely, of New York, but it was almost three thousand miles and ten years away. 

Indecision kept me close. And as time wore on, I'd fly reconnaissance sometimes and see bulldozers and people with chainsaws starting to cut down the trees, and I'd move further and further back into the woods, until one day they weren't bulldozers anymore but bug fighters firing dracon cannons from the sky. By the end it was too late anyway.

They weren't completely destroying the forest. Someone, probably, had realized that it was a good idea to keep at least some plants around if they wanted the planet to still be inhabitable. And I thought, too, as their progress drove me further into the woods, that they were trying to drive me out. Someone smart. Someone who knew a thing or two about strategy. Someone who had maybe known me long enough to take a guess where I'd gone.

What I'm saying is, I wasn't surprised that it was Marco. I would have been surprised if it was anyone else.

I didn't know how long I was out there. It was too easy to lose track of time. It was spring when it all started, and we'd already cycled through the worst of California summer and its interminable heat that seemed to last well into what a more civilized world might have called autumn. I stuck to the trees and kept close to streams to keep cool and to try to clean away the constant film of dirt that never seemed to go away. I tried cleaning my leotard, too, but there was only so much I could do, and it was already threadbare in places, and it all felt like a futile effort anyway.

I was so tired. I was tired of running. I was tired of hiding. I was tired of how paranoid the whole situation made me--I felt like I was being watched sometimes, but there was never anyone there. I was tired of not knowing what to do or what to expect. I didn't really want to be caught. Self-preservation told me that I should just keep running. Forever, if I had to.

But the trees were getting thin, and those bug fighters were getting closer, and I ran out of road sooner rather than later.

Eventually, there was nowhere left to go. The end of the line ended up being a small clearing at the edge of the tree line, at the base of a sheer, rocky cliff face. If I tilted my head back, I could see an overhang, high overhead, too high up for its shadow to reach me. There was no trail, and it was too steep for even the most intrepid mountain climber, but still, I thought about it. I thought about running off into the mountains and disappearing for good. Would the Yeerks level a mountain to find me? Seemed like an awful lot of effort for one teenage girl, even one who could morph and who knew the future. You'd think they'd have plenty of morph-capable hosts now, and really, what did they need to know now that they'd won?

In the end, I didn't run. Instead, I waited. It didn't take long.

I saw the bug fighters coming over the trees--what was left of them, anyway--and I stayed just where I was. I watched them land with arched eyebrows. When the hatches of the fighters opened, I almost laughed. Two bug fighters, ten Hork-Bajir  _ and  _ an Animorph-Controller? It was almost flattering. I’d have been hard-pressed to take on three Hork-Bajir, even at my best. At the moment, I hadn’t slept in two days and was subsisting only on what I was pretty sure were blackberries.

When he emerged from the fighter, I tried to brace myself. I did. You’d think I’d be mentally prepared for this, me more than anybody, but it still felt like a punch to the gut to see him like this.

“Visser Two, I presume,” I said, before he could say anything. My voice sounded raspy. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had anyone to talk to besides myself.

His lips twitched. “Nothing so lofty yet. Maybe next promotion.”

He looked like he was going to say something else, but I cut him off first. “Visser Overkill, then.” I looked pointedly at the Visser’s entourage. “So many Hork-Bajir for just one girl.”

“You can never be too careful,” he said. Then, he must have made some sort of signal, because the Hork-Bajir on either side of him stepped forward.

“I surrender.”

That stopped everyone for one shocked moment. If I wasn’t afraid my calm veneer would crack at any moment, I might have smiled.

The Visser, who had started to turn away, looked back at me now, an expression I couldn’t read on his--Marco’s--face. “So soon?”

I shrugged. I could feel my whole body trembling. Could he see? “I gave a good chase.”

“Hmm.” He turned away from me, and for one insane second I thought he looked disappointed in me. That couldn't have been right. Before I had too much time to think about it though, the Yeerk wearing my friend's face said, "Doesn't seem useful to try these out on a _willing_ prisoner, but they did insist I bring these along..." He gestured at one of the Hork-Bajir who'd been standing back until now. 

As they stepped forward, I caught a glimpse of the Visser heading back to the Bug Fighters without a backward glance, and then he disappeared from view as the Hork-Bajir Controller came to stand in front of me. When I looked down, I saw what looked an awful lot like a set of shackles--two cuffs, held together by a bar between them. They emitted a soft, blue light. 

"What--" I was cut off, abruptly, as my hands were grabbed and jerked forward, the cuffs closing around my wrists before I could think or do anything. I had a moment to stare down at them and wonder just what was happening before the light turned abruptly to an angry red, and any hope of rational thought flew away.

_ Pain. _ Hot and sudden pain, shooting up my arms. Like knives and fire all at once. Like having the skin peeled from your bones while you lay conscious and aware the whole time. Like every battle wound I’d ever received, but all at once.

I heard a scream. It didn’t register as my own.

I felt my legs buckle. A clawed hand held me upright. And then I was being dragged toward the waiting bug fighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Going Back Dilemma: sure, I _can_ directly reference 90's fanfiction by name, but it's also kind of weird to have Priton go "ah yes. This is like a scene from that one fanfic Steph used to like so much." So he gets deja vu instead. Incidentally, the fanfic in question is [Consumed](http://www.oocities.org/area51/keep/7466/consume.htm) by Guardian. It and its [prequel](https://web.archive.org/web/20090729231313/http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Keep/7466/ttbw.htm) went a long way to inspiring some of the darker aspects of 41's universe. Which is funny, considering it was written well before the canon book.
> 
> On the subject of time: I know it's a long running joke by now that time is meaningless in Going Back, and while that continues to be true, I have to make some concession for this Part. In Part 11, the "Day ____" bits were there because they're in Megamorphs #4. Here, they're so I can keep track of how much time has passed. That said, it has the added bonus that I can make certain things happen on specific dates. I'm using April 1, 2000 as Day 1, entirely because it's the publication date of #41 (and also so I can definitively know how many leap days there are in the 10 years). Seventy-seven days after April 1 is June 17, which is, in fact, my birthday. It's also something of a long-standing tradition to not count my birthday until 2:14pm Central Standard Time, the time I was born. So, "a quarter past noon" is a pretty apt time for Priton to bring it up.
> 
> I have one comment on the second half of this chapter, at least until after I write the next one, and that's that the good(?) news is that this is the single worst thing Priton ever does (or allows to happen, anyway). So. At least it's all uphill from here? This is the thought that's going to help me get through writing the next chapter.


	4. Steph, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: I'm classifying what happens in this chapter as torture, even if it isn't described in detail.

_**Priton** _

_Day 186_

We didn't take her straight to the Yeerk Pool. That would have been a very short trip, and there was only one way that was going to end. That wasn't what I wanted, and surrender or no, I was confident that wasn't what Steph wanted either. 

I knew what I did to her, okay? I saw it there in Marco's memory, and Erek was more than happy to show me exactly what it looked like behind closed doors if I asked. I might have royally fucked it all up, but at least I'd had good intentions. At least I _cared--_ more than cared--about her and what I was doing. It would not be better with another Yeerk, especially not the kind of Yeerk she would have gotten. And, frankly, caring had gotten us _here,_ anyway, I didn't really want to know what could be worse than this.

Really, there were only two options that I could see. They were both terrible. They both had their dangers. I knew which one made the most sense, but if she said yes to the other, I'd make it happen. Somehow. I owed her the choice, even if neither option was ideal.

Instead of the Yeerk Pool, she was being held in one of the cells in the same building where they'd kept the Chee. There was a small pool on site. We weren't terribly far from the main Pool. It wasn't a _completely_ nonsensical detour. When we arrived, I ordered her to be taken down to the cells, and then I lingered upstairs for as long as I could justify it to myself. 

I didn't leave her there long. When the elevator let me out and crossed the hallway to her cell, the Hork-Bajir guards had left already, leaving a lone, familiar sentry guarding the door. Those cuffs were designed to leave a person too incapacitated to morph, but even if they weren't, and Steph got out somehow, one guard was more than enough to keep her right there. It's not like she could she could get past him, and it was very unlikely that she'd be willing to try.

I was a coward, so I lingered upstairs long enough that I didn't have to see Steph's reaction to Erek. 

Erek didn't look at me as I approached, but I could all but feel the anger radiating off him. I hadn't seen Erek angry often--annoyed, frustrated, bitter, yes, but rarely angry. The only time I could remember seeing him truly angry was when we dealt with the Howlers. 

I appreciated that he was angry on Steph's behalf. I could appreciate, too, that that anger was entirely directed at me. I thought he might have been wishing very hard that he could murder me. I couldn't blame him.

Still, when I entered the cell, the air around me shimmered for a moment, and the sounds outside became muffled and muted. I didn't know what scene Erek was projecting for anyone who might be watching. Talking? Torture? The room as it had been before I entered it? 

It was probably the most depressing room I had ever seen. Narrow and dark, with the only light coming from a thin, high window. It looked like the dungeon of a castle, except that instead of stone walls and floor there was cement. Just as uncomfortable, I imagined.

Steph was pushed up against the far wall, under the window, looking like death. That wasn’t a metaphor--I’d seen dead bodies with more color than she had now. She looked starved and pale, and her whole body was shaking violently, though admittedly, that might have been from the cuffs still around her wrists.

We stared at each other for a long minute while I tried not to be sick. Acting is easier in front of an audience.

When I felt I’d buried what empathy I was capable of down deep enough to hide it, I said, “Aren’t you even going to say hello?” A Marco smile. The last words she’d said to me, but flipped.

“Go f--” She shuddered. I waited. “Fuck you,” she said finally, more a gasp than anything.

I’d thought of things to say. I had a whole schtick prepared. I was prepared for a little speech. Something dickish, surely, because what else would it be? But I’d expected her to still have fight left in her. I was ready to spar. I’d missed it. I’d missed _her_. That wasn't what was going to happen here.

So, instead, I said, "Is that any way to talk to a friend? Especially one you haven’t seen in so long."

Steph narrowed her eyes. "We’re not friends.”

"No. You're right. You never thought of it that way, did you?" I stepped closer. She flinched back, but I made no actual motion to touch her at all. There were lines I wasn't willing to cross, and lines I was. In an almost casual tone, I continued, “Remember the last time? When you practically begged me to stay?” I tilted my head to the side to consider her. “Right after Tom, right?” It did occur to me that, all terrible circumstances aside, this was something Steph wouldn't appreciate being talked about in front of two witnesses, but it's not like I could do anything about that. And it's not like Erek and Marco weren't aware at this point. 

I couldn’t decide if horrified recognition was better than pain in her expression. “No.”

“Or after the Cretaceous incident. Remember how broken up you were over that?”

“Stop it.” She twisted her head away, like if she didn’t look at me, I couldn’t keep talking.

I should stop. Any other time I would have stopped. Using a host's thoughts and feelings against them was the sort of thing sadistic Yeerks did, and I was supposed to be better than that. It's real easy to trick yourself into thinking that you're one of the good ones, you know? That because I tried to be friends with my hosts, because I didn't take joy in their suffering or actively try to make it worse by mentally torturing them, because I felt bad about using their bodies sometimes for things they wouldn't otherwise consent to, that that all made me a better person, a better Yeerk, than most of my fellows. It was all a load of bullshit. I wasn't any better than any of them, really, and I was standing there with all the proof I needed of that fact.

Still. I thought, maybe, it would be easier if she hated me. For her, I mean. There are worse reasons to keep going than pure spite.

“That was even before that whole debacle with Aftran," I continued. "You said--”

“Shut up!” Her voice was surprisingly loud and forceful. I took a step back. She was breathing faster now. “What do you want?”

“You,” I said simply.

This evidently wasn’t what she’d expected. “ _ What _ ?”

“Well, part of you,” I clarified. “But I think you’ll agree it’s a pretty significant piece.” I raised an eyebrow, staring her up and down rather pointedly. Tried not to think too much about what that sounded like.

I didn't really mean it. I had thought, when it became clear that it was only a short matter of time before we found Steph, that this would be simple. There really were no good choices for her here, but I thought, if I established a point of contact, if I helped set her off in a different direction, that at least I'd know she was safe. 

It made the most sense. It was the least messy. I couldn't have traded hosts at this point even if I really wanted to, not unless I wanted it to be the very last thing I did. But still, I thought, for a moment, that if Steph said yes, I would find a way to make it happen. I didn't know how--it wasn't a contingency I'd planned for. I hadn't expected her to surrender, and I hadn't expected her to look so... frail. She'd hate me, and hate being a visser's host, but at least she'd be guaranteed the relative safety that afforded. Right now, "relative safety" was about all any of us could hope to aim for. Ten years was a very long time. She was still a _child._ A child with more life experience than even an adult should have, but still a child.

Steph shook her head violently back and forth. "No."

“Come on. It wouldn’t be so bad.” I grinned--a strange, smarmy grin that didn't feel right on my face but felt appropriate for the act I was trying to put on. "You really _loved_ me the last time."

She let out a cry and jolted forward, as if to lunge at me, but she failed almost as soon as she began, falling back against the wall, her frustration turning to a whimper.

You know, Yeerks don’t really have a concept of an afterlife. Not like humans do, anyway. At most, it's a very vague idea. So many of us die giving life to our grubs, and we carry with us pieces of all of our hosts--it’s not unthinkable to assume we carry pieces of our parents, too.

Sometimes I think about the human concept of “hell.” And I wonder if they’d let me in.

“I think I’ll give you a little time to get used to the idea,” I said. Then, I turned and walked out of the cell.

Out in the corridor, Erek stood waiting, still and silent as he usually was these days. I didn’t look at him, but I stopped for a moment outside the door, then turned my head to the left, in his direction, but looking out as if trying to see down the hallway. Then I turned and walked in the opposite direction without a word.

<Is it really a good idea to make the person who knows _who you are_ hate your guts?> Marco asked.

<I don't know. It's worked out for me so far.>  


* * *

**_Steph_ **

I stayed in that cell for what felt like a very long time.

I didn’t know how long it had been. It felt like days, but some part of my pain stricken brain registered that they wouldn’t leave me for that long. They’d have infested me, or killed me. 

Or hell, maybe I  _ was  _ dead. Maybe that’s what this was. It felt like a heavy fog had fallen over me. The pain was still there, ever present, but it felt different now. I thought my wrists were going numb where the cuffs were. I could hear sounds from outside, but distant, like they were getting farther and farther away.

Was this what death was like? I thought it’d hurt less, you know, after it was over. You’d think the Ellimist could’ve shown up to pay his respects to  _ me, _ after everything I’d been through for him. Asshole.

When I was on the run, out in the woods, I’d thought that if I died, I’d just revert back home, in my proper timeline--or my  _ usual  _ timeline, anyway. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe this was it. Maybe I’d been abandoned by the powers that be in this godforsaken hell universe, and death here was like death anywhere. Final and infinite. Unknowable until you experienced it for yourself.

Through my fog, I saw the door open. I saw the air around me shimmer. The sounds beyond, so quiet to me before, disappeared. 

A familiar canine form entered.

“Erek?” My voice didn’t sound like my own to me anymore. My  _ body  _ didn’t  _ feel  _ like my own anymore.

“Yes,” he said, coming to kneel in front of me. “You have to be quiet.” He was taking my cuffed wrists into his hands.

“Why?”

Erek didn’t answer. Instead, he squeezed the metal that separated us. I watched as cracks zigzagged across their width, and then, with a  _ crack!  _ they split open.

I gasped, jerking my hands back, clutching at my wrists, fingers greedily massaging the tendons there. The stabbing pain was gone suddenly, but it left a throbbing ache in its place. My vision clouded for a moment as I tried to breathe in deep gasps. 

“Can you stand?” Erek was asking.

I tried. I did little more than shuffle my body around before I realized my hands couldn’t support my weight enough to lift myself. Before I could say this, though, I felt arms underneath me.

“Where--” 

Erek shook his head. He stood, with me in his arms. I felt his body move as he raised and lowered his leg, and then I heard a smashing sound. When I looked down, the cuffs lay in several pieces.

The move was a blur. I remembered being carried. I remembered being set down somewhere and being picked up again. I remembered closing my eyes and wondering if I’d ever open them again.

At last, we stopped. I didn’t know where we were, but I felt myself being lowered onto something soft, and when I opened my eyes, Erek’s usual hologram had returned. I had no idea where we were. The light in the room was dim and grey, like when you try to block out the sun in the middle of the afternoon.

I tried to sit up, and was immediately hit by a wave of dizziness. I gripped whatever I was laying on--it felt like a bed?--and hoped that, eventually, the world would stop spinning.

I felt a hand press down on my shoulder, forcing me back down onto the bed. “Lie still,” Erek said.

I obeyed. My mind was too foggy to think about anything yet--what had happened, where I was. Erek. Priton. Oh, God. When my mind cleared, I’d have to decide which hurt worse--Priton’s betrayal or the loss of the Chee.

For now, at least, the betrayal was winning out, because at least Erek was  _ here.  _

“You’re safe here for right now,” Erek was saying now. “Until you’re feeling better.”

He started to get up and a new, fresh panic seized me. I grabbed hold of the only part of him I could reach--his sleeve, or at least, the representation of a sleeve--desperate suddenly to keep him there. “Don’t go.” My voice sounded small and weak to my ears.

Erek pried my fingers away easily. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see him go, feeling defeated. I’d survived, I hadn’t been infested, and now I had no idea what to do. Nothing was going as planned at all.

I felt a hand under my head and then something cold pressed against my face. “Drink this,” I heard Erek ordered. I didn’t have the energy to protest that I could handle a glass of water by myself. 

At least until I almost choked. I coughed and rolled away. “You’re gonna drown me,” I wheezed.

Erek was silent for a long moment, then I heard a thunk as he set down the glass. “You should rest. We can talk later.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The basic plot of Going Back's 41 has never changed since its inception, though how we got here has changed over time as I've written Priton and figured out what it'd take to get him here. I think of all the characters in Going Back, Priton probably has the most complex motivations. GB!Steph's going in were admittedly naive, which she'd probably concede at this point. The Animorphs' and Erek's are the same as they were in canon. An argument could be made for the Ellimist's motivations, but those are extremely ambiguous, so let's go with what we know: Priton is motivated by the desire to protect the people he loves, and by self-preservation, in that order. It took me a long time to realize that Priton prioritizes Ben & co. and GB!Steph above himself, though that might be because he's unwilling to starve for anyone, specifically. That's just his hard limit. 
> 
> Priton's priority in 41 is and has always been protecting GB!Steph. That doesn't justify the way he does it. He wouldn't do it if he couldn't justify it to himself, and I think he feels like he doesn't have a real choice here, but it's something that's really caused by the domino effect of his own actions. Quite possibly, this would have happened if he'd reacted to the Drode's threat in literally any other way than belligerently doing exactly what he was told not to do--though the only thing he might have realistically done otherwise is prolong the inevitable, since it's not like there was ever any real possibility that he'd do anything to stop it. Priton pretty openly hates and resents the Ellimist and Crayak in equal measure, The consequences of his actions might have looked very different had they saved Tom in, say, 49 instead of 31. Mind you, it would have been extremely out of character for Priton to react to the Drode in literally any other way than a massive "fuck you," but that's still on him. Also, it really makes more sense for the story to save Tom sooner rather than later, but "makes more sense" and "easier" are not always the same thing.
> 
> Priton's not the first character to ever try to sink his own ship, but he's the first one I've personally written to willfully torpedo it. Well done, him, I guess.


	5. Los Angeles

_**Steph** _

_Day 193_

Erek brought me a new morphing outfit. My old one was beyond saving at this point. Still, it felt wrong when I handed it off to Erek to get rid of. It was stupid, but it was literally the only thing I had--the only thing I could take with me--and I'd had it since the beginning of everything. What Erek brought me was fine--a spandex bodysuit, basically, that he told me was the new standard in the Empire, a fact that was almost too weird to contemplate. For some reason, the bodysuit was light blue in color, which just made me think of Andalites. I wasn't sure if that was intentional or not.

Still, it covered my arms down to my wrists, and that was good enough for me.

I spent one too short week with Erek. We were somewhere near LA, in a temporary safe house that wasn't really much of anything at all. A place to sleep. A closet-sized bathroom. A kitchen that was just a mini-fridge and a camping stove. It was a hell of a lot more than I'd seen in months.

Erek filled me in on what I'd missed. My head was swimming with information--it was too much. It was too fast. It had all fallen apart so completely, so quickly. It didn't feel natural. 

"It's not fair," I said to Erek, when he explained what had happened to him and the other Chee. I felt absurdly guilty, even though there was nothing I could have done anyway. Still. If nothing else, it was pretty obvious to me that Erek, at least, wouldn't be like _this_ \--a slave to a Yeerk visser, regardless of who that Yeerk visser was--if he'd never gotten involved with me at all. Probably. I didn't have anything else to compare this to, for once. Even so, it's hard to know your best friend would have been better off without you.

Erek shrugged. His expression was grim. "Better this than dead. Right?"

I winced, but didn't have a good argument for that. That _was_ what I'd thought, what Priton had told Erek I thought, a long time ago. "I'm sorry," I said instead, feeling utterly useless.

Erek didn't say it was all right, or that it wasn't my fault. Neither of those things would have been true. Still, he held out his hands and asked, "Can I see your arms?" When I held them out, he took hold of them, as gentle as he ever was, and pushed back the sleeves on my morphing suit to get a clearer view of my wrists. Erek made a humming sound. "Well. That's curious."

That was one way of putting it.

Morphing is supposed to heal everything. There aren't supposed to be scars left behind. All I should have needed to get rid of the physical effects of those cuffs was a good night's sleep and a quick morph and demorph. And I did _feel_ better--physically, at any rate. That should have been the end of it. But it wasn't. Instead, there were thin scars around my wrists, where the cuffs had been. Well. Not _scars_ precisely, I guess. They reminded me of burn marks, like when you leave something on a hot oven rack for too long, and the area touching the metal starts to char. 

At least they didn't hurt. Maybe I could pretend they were a strange, uneven tattoo. Maybe I shouldn't think about it too hard and just take it as one of the oddities of this universe. It was already too late for that, honestly, but it would have done my mind a little good, at least, if I could have managed it anyway.

Despite everything, it was nice, for a little while, to stay there in that space with Erek. When I asked, he said he got sent off on his own to take care of things sometimes, it wasn't that odd for him to be gone for a week. 

"Won't there be hell to pay for my escape?"

Erek didn't respond.

"They're going to notice the two happening in tandem--"

"Just drop it, Steph. Please."

Lesson one of surviving, it seemed, was not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Lesson two was letting other people's problems go ignored. Even Erek's.

Still, when it was time to part ways--him back to the Empire, and me to God only knew where--I stood at the open window, prepared to leave in a moment a little too close for comfort to the last time I'd left Erek behind, and I said, "I wish you could come with me."

Erek grimaced. "I know."

"I'm sorry." For so much. "I'm so sorry."

"I know. _Go."_

* * *

_**Priton** _

You discover some funny things about yourself when the world's quickly going to shit. Just that week alone, I'd learned that I could torture someone I cared about.

'Course, she was gone now. Officially, Steph broke free of the cuffs and got past all guards before anyone had the chance to check on her. There was a valuable lesson to be learned about leaving a morph-capable, uninfested person alone in a room with largely untested technology. Someone was getting in trouble for that, but it was no one who particularly mattered in the grand scheme of things.

Exactly four people knew what actually happened, and only three of us knew the full extent. Between Erek, Marco and me, I was the only one who had any kind of autonomy to rat myself out.

They'd given me an office. Logically, I could see why. High-ranking Yeerk, presumably I'd have important things to do that warranted an office. And the relative privacy was nice. But mostly it still felt like I was a child playing at being a grown-up. I didn't know what to do with most of the space. At some point, I'd gotten a couple plants on a whim, but they'd long since died because Erek was the only one who remembered to water them and I kept sending him off to do things for me. It was necessary--it wouldn't do much good to have a Chee for intimidation and then never use him--but it meant that there was a huddle of dead plants in my office that I hadn't gotten around to having removed yet.

I had a very long week to think about what I'd done. There was work to do, and messes to cover up, which at least had the unintended effect of making me feel like a real visser. Nothing like fucking up and pinning the blame on your subordinates to really get you into the role. 

One week. One week to slowly drive myself insane, wondering. What was happening. What she was thinking. Wondering if it could be any worse than what I was imagining.

I wouldn't regret it if she was safe. That was what I told myself. Whatever came from this, however it might fuck us both over, if she was safe it was worth it. 

Still, a week on, I waited in my office, equal parts hopeful and terrified. And then it finally came.

_Knock, knock, knock._

_Knock, knock, knock._

It was a very simple signal, admittedly. A weirdly specific number of knocks. A bit like a joke only we would understand. Six was, and continued to be, the passcode. If it was good enough for the Pemalites, it was good enough for us. If I tried hard enough, most days I could think it was funny instead of a possible tragic omen.

"Enter," I said.

The door opened, and Erek stepped into my office, closing it behind him before turning back to face me. He seemed to take in my expectant look for a long moment before saying, tonelessly, "It's done."

I let out the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding, and let myself relax, just a little. "Right. Well. Guess there's work to do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No one's relationship is coming out of this unscathed, huh. 
> 
> On the one hand, I envision Priton as the kind of visser who collects human junk in the way that Visser Three collects monstrous morphs. On the other hand, he might have been compelled by the spirit of AniTV's version of Visser One to surround himself with plants. But you know, not enough to actually pay attention to them.
> 
> There are a couple tags that feel especially relevant to this chapter--namely "Dream Logic," for things like the Anti-Morphing cuffs leaving physical scars. There's some IC lore for how that works, but I address that later, so hang tight. The other tag that starts its relevancy in this chapter is "the world's slowest cross-country roadtrip." Because GB!Steph has, at this stage, nine and a half years to get to New York City. That's going to take a while since she doesn't have transport. And is going to make a lot of stops along the way. I guess she doesn't technically _have_ to do anything, but end goals feel important, and she wouldn't be in this story if she could help herself for that kind of thing, anyway. 
> 
> I'm not sure when I decided that "the passcode is six" was going to have relevance past #27, but it came into my head one day to use it for this and it's been stuck there ever since.


	6. Yosemite

**_Steph_ **

_Day 319_

One of the first things I learned from the end of the world as we knew it was that nothing was as simple, or as cut and dry, as I thought it was. Humanity didn't fall like one perfect line of dominoes--there were gaps, pockets of humans hiding out from the Empire. Already, I was learning to seek them out. It wasn't safe to stay in one place for too long--and it occurred to me that it might do _them_ more harm than good to have me stick around--but for a little while, it was good to know there were other free people out there, too. It was good to not be so alone.

I'd stumbled across this particular group on accident. I'd found myself in what remained of Yosemite National Park for less than a day when they'd caught me--quite literally, I'd wandered into a trap left out near their camp, and had still been trying to morph something small to get out of it when they'd appeared.

Three days later, we were getting along significantly better.

"We came out here for a camping trip. Memorial Day weekend, a whole group of us." The leader of the group, an older guy who said his name was Jim, waved his hand around at the rest. "Then everything started going to Hell, and people started leaving, saying we should all go home."

One of the others, Kelly, shook her head. "Not there was much to go home _to_."

"It couldn't have been that quick," I said. "Right? Things must have been happening..."

"There were rumors," Jim acknowledged. "But no one really _knew_ anything. The government wasn't saying anything--"

"'Course not." That came from Kai, the last person to round out this little group. "They wouldn't say anything even if the government _wasn't_ full of aliens."

"Yeah. Well. Point was, there wasn't anything coming from anyone credible."

I'd been with them a week when Kai poked their head into tent we were sharing--a tight cramped space that wasn't really meant for two people--and asked me if I wanted to come with them to find more firewood.

There wasn't a lot to appreciate about the way my life was now, admittedly. It was more often than not maddeningly lonely, and it was always dangerous, but every now and then I'd find myself somewhere I wouldn't have gotten to go otherwise, not while fighting a war, anyway. 

It was hard not to stare sometimes. Maybe because there were fewer and fewer naturally beautiful places left, post-invasion. Maybe because it made me feel ludicrously homesick.

I hadn't even realized I'd stopped walking until Kai glanced back at me, smiling ruefully. "Nice, right?" We'd ended up on a trail lined with trees. We were on an incline, heading up into the mountains. I could hear, but not quite see, running water somewhere below and to our left. "You ever been up here?"

"Once." I had to tilt my head back a little to look at Kai, since they were a bit ahead of me on the trail, a little higher up the incline. "I came here with my dad and sister once, a long time ago." What felt like at least two lifetimes ago by this point. I peered over the side of the trail thoughtfully. "I dropped my dad's camera on one of these trails."

I heard them laugh, and when I looked back at them, Kai was shaking their head. "Got it. Don't trust you with anything expensive."

We kept going, stopping to gather up the wood that we'd come for before heading back down the trail. It wasn't very far. We'd only been gone for ten minutes. It was a little nice, I thought, to spend time with someone my own age, or near enough. Kai had told me they were getting ready to start college before everything went to hell, which made them older than me by only... a year? Two years? If I'd had trouble keeping track of my age before, I was never going to get a handle on it now.

"Better not," I told them. "I think I literally dropped it down the mountain."

They laughed, and for a second, their smile at my dumb anecdote did something funny to my insides that made me pause for a moment too long-- _Oh--_ and then the moment was over and I still felt strange in a way I couldn't quite wrap my brain around just yet.

I wasn't planning to stay much longer. As much as it felt like we'd found an oasis, none of us thought it would last long. I wasn't sure where I was going after this. I had only a vague idea of where places of interest were in this part of the country, and I didn't know how that might have changed over the last year or so. I had a vague notion of heading towards Sacramento--I was pretty sure it was only two or three hours away, or however long that would take me without a car--and after that, who even knew.

We headed back to camp with a couple armfuls of dead branches. Jim and Kelly were setting up to make dinner out of whatever they'd foraged or caught. It was a little respite, at least. It couldn't and wouldn't last, but for a few days, at least, it was nice not to have to be alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kai exists for a couple important reasons: 1) It feels like a disservice to myself to only acknowledge my own queerness in one throw away line in Paradise Lost. I also know myself well enough to know that GB!Steph's mindset would be "I like a boy, and I'm going to use that as an excuse to never examine my sexuality further than that." Obviously, her thing with Priton doesn't negate the fact that she's biromantic. But I remember distinctly being a teenager and being generally confused about my sexuality for this exact reason. 2) I really don't like that all of my trans/gender non-conforming representation in this fic are... aliens. I don't feel too good about the implications of that. At any rate, we'll be seeing Kai again at some point before 41 is over.
> 
> Where in the World is GB!Steph?: At some point, I decided that GB!Steph's stops along the way to New York would be places of personal significance to me. Part of that's just because they're easy backdrops for me to write to. Part of that's because I think GB!Steph is genuinely drawn there. Far from home--by any definition--she's drawn to familiarity. In this instance, Yosemite was the first vacation she really remembers. My dad, sister and I went when I was seven, and I really did drop my dad's camera down a mountain. No one trusted me with a camera for years after that, and in fact, I think GB!Steph probably left home before that would have been lifted. Her vague notion of heading toward Sacramento next is entirely tied to the fact that I had some fandom friends who lived out that way circa 2001.
> 
> Probably no one thought 41 of all books would be the most autobiographical.
> 
> This chapter's a fairly short interlude. Next chapter might be kind of heavy again, and I feel like maybe I should space out the heavy stuff for my own mental health while writing it, and anyone else's while reading it, too.


	7. Rachel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Implied suicide and (temporary) character death. Also some blink-and-you'll-miss-it suicidal ideation. 
> 
> This chapter is really only necessary if you desperately want to know what's going on with the other Animorphs during this Part. It's mostly left open what actually happens, but it's still talked about. Be kind to yourselves, friends. <3

_**Priton** _

_Day 528_

It wasn't the first time we found ourselves in New York. We'd been a couple times now, for various reasons. It wasn't even the first time I'd had to work with one of the other Animorphs--or their Yeerks, anyway--much as I usually tried to avoid it. Sometimes it just couldn't be avoided.

That didn't mean I had to particularly _like_ it. 

I didn't have strong opinions of most of the others' Yeerks going into all this. Ironically, the two I'd ever thought about at all--albeit in a very vague sort of way--were Marco's and Cassie's. And, well, we knew how well those were working out for me now. 

For all that the Animorphs had once been an exciting and triumphant acquisition for the Empire, we were already a dwindling breed of Controller. The Empire had never managed to take Steph or Tobias, and now, just recently still, Cassie and her Yeerk had already gone rogue. This wasn't _surprising_ \--I remembered Niss, and quite frankly, I hadn't liked her, or what this universe had done to Cassie, before, when it was just a very strange scenario I saw in Steph's head. I liked it all even less now. That said, I wasn't too sorry to see them go. It's hard to spend much time around someone when you know that you're probably going to be the death of each other one of these days. That might have been a bit dramatic, a bit of a stretch, but it was also a scenario I could so easily see unfolding, down the line.

It wasn't exactly something I wanted to rush towards. Not most days, anyway.

As it happened, it wasn't hard to avoid the others, most of the time. We all had our own work to do. Ax had started doing work off-world more, which was convenient. With Cassie gone, for now, there was just Rachel and Jake to contend with occasionally, which was... complicated. Mostly because I didn't know what to expect from them. They were wildcards I still hadn't quite figured out. It was a problem that might have been solved by working with them more closely, but I wasn't too big on that idea, to be quite honest.

It wasn't just their resemblance to old friends that was the problem.

I waited on the tarmac of what had once been LaGuardia Airport and was now mid-way through being converted into a proper hangar for spacecraft. It was a warmish morning in mid-September, about a year and a half after this nightmare started, and I was waiting for the newly minted Visser Seven. 

It was an odd time. Promotions were getting thrown around quite a lot just now. My own felt like an anchor around my neck. Still made my skin crawl to hear it. At least the old title was stolen. Wasn't really mine.

The one nice thing about this particular project, I supposed, was that it was somewhere unfamiliar. I'd never been to New York before all this happened, nor had any of the hosts I'd had. We were here to oversee the construction of a Yeerk Pool, which was strange enough on its own. At least if we knocked down a few minor landmarks to make room, there wasn't any nostalgic regret to go along with it. We were heading to Chicago soon to do pretty much the same thing--I had a feeling that experience was going to be much, much worse.

I wasn't sure that this really needed _two_ vissers to handle, but it was too late now.

There wasn't room yet to accommodate a blade ship, so she arrived in a bug fighter. Less flashy, but theoretically more expedient.

<She's late,> Marco observed.

<Yep.> There was an antsy-ness that I couldn't be sure if it came from me or from Marco. We didn't really want to see Rachel--we didn't really want to see any of the others--but we also _did_ want to. It was a complicated feeling. There's a weird comfort in familiarity, I guess, even if its a grossly bastardized version. I probably wouldn't have lasted this long without Marco and Erek, even in these circumstances.

We finally spotted a bug fighter approaching, and sure enough, once it started descending and it got close enough to see inside the cockpit, there she was, alongside the Taxxon pilot.

When the fighter landed, and she finally emerged--still looking like a model out of a magazine, even during what was basically the apocalypse, and even while wearing a standard issue morphing outfit--complete with a holstered dracon beam around her waist. Somehow, this was decidedly less charming when it was a Yeerk wearing your friend's face.

"Visser Seven," I greeted. "So nice of you to join us. Bad traffic, was there?" I added sweetly.

"Visser Two," she said, matching my tone. She made a show of looking around us before asking, "Where's your guard dog gotten to?"

It took me an extra second to realize what she meant. My answering expression was less a smile and more a baring of teeth. "Running errands for me."

Visser Seven snorted as she brushed past me and I turned to follow her. "Yes, I'm sure you have him doing _very important_ work."

There were probably a lot of reasons why Rachel's Yeerk didn't like me, you know. It could've been a natural progression from Rachel and Marco's relationship--just without the underlying friendship to take away the intended sting of traded barbs. It could have just been that I outranked her, and that had to hurt at least a little bit. More likely, though, I thought it might be because Visser Seven strongly suspected I used Erek to spy on her.

I mean. She wasn't _wrong_. She just wasn't particularly special in that regard.

At any rate, I wasn't lying about where Erek was at the moment. He really was running an errand of sorts for me. He wasn't even in New York at the moment, or even in the Northeast. He was in Phoenix, following a lead about a pocket of resistance that had sprung up in the last couple months. That wasn't unusual--things were moving incredibly fast, but it was still very early days--and ordinarily I wouldn't have bothered sending Erek at all. I might have sent someone less important, at any rate. No, the reason I sent Erek was because there were rumors of a morph-capable human in the area.

I couldn't-- _shouldn't_ \--really do much, but I could at least try and keep tabs. Assuming it was even her, of course. Not that there were a lot of morph-capable free humans running around.

"As much as I'd _love_ to get to work right away," Visser Seven said, tossing her hair over one shoulder to look back at me, expression perfectly innocent, "I'll need a feed first. Assuming you can accommodate."

I suppressed a sigh. "Of course."

* * *

<You know she's doing this to get under your skin, right?>

<I worked that out myself, yeah.>

I'd taken up temporary residence in an office while we waited. The building mostly held offices, and a small pool on the ground floor. I was pretty sure it hadn't seen anyone as important as a high-ranking visser before today--the office I'd commandeered usually belonged to a Sub-Visser Twenty-Six, who I assumed was a Hork-Bajir Controller, given the tall ceilings and weirdly shaped desk chair. It wasn't as nice as my Manhattan office, which was about three times the size and had a big bank of windows from which I could look out at the city--or stare broodingly from, according to Marco.

Marco didn't say anything for awhile, though I could hear his mind working regardless. I tried not to interrupt that. Hosts, in my experience, tended to appreciate it when you didn't make the fact that you could read their minds quite so blatantly obvious. There weren't many things that proved universal, but that was probably the closest I'd found.

<This is a long time for her to be in the pool, isn't it?>

<Yeah.>

I was standing near the office window just then, but now I started to pace. By now, almost a year after its first "failed" test, it was a well-documented fact that Anti-Morphing cuffs could leave scars. We weren't sure why yet, but it seemed to mostly happen if they were left on too long. An hour was fine--or, more accurately, didn't cause lasting physical damage, anyway.

I hadn't known the cuffs would leave scars when I left Steph in them for as long as I had. That wasn't much comfort at all now that I knew, through Marco, what it felt like to wear them.

Generally speaking, getting around having to use the cuffs during feedings was easy. They didn't require a technician to administer. All I needed was a private room with a private pool, and if I wanted my Chee guard there to make sure that I wasn't disturbed, or that my host didn't find a way to break free, no one was going to argue that that wasn't my prerogative. And that worked just fine for all involved. Most of the time. Except when Erek wasn't here. 

I hadn't even realized I'd started reflexively rubbing at my wrists until Marco said, exasperated, <Would you _stop_?>

My hands dropped to my sides. <Right. If she's not done in ten minutes, I'll-->

I'm not sure what I was going to say. Probably that I'd see what was taking to so long, even though there was very little I could really do. Not that it would have mattered.

Just then, a loud blaring siren went off, emanating from somewhere under the office's desk.

I jumped back. " _Jesus Christ_!"

For one, heart pounding second, I stared at the desk, at the flashing red light that accompanied the echoing shriek of whatever alarm was now going off.

<Well,> Marco said, completely unhelpful. <That's probably not good.>

* * *

"What do you mean, she _escaped?_ She's not supposed to be able to _escape,_ we've been working on improving those cuffs since the _last_ collossal failure." 

"Y-y-yes, Visser." The unfortunate soul who'd been tasked with breaking the news to me looked about ready to piss himself. I'd have felt sorry for him under just about any other circumstance. "You see, we don't think she necessarily _broke free_ of the Anti-Morphing cuffs. We--" He faltered a bit as I stared him down dubiously. "We think she's still wearing them."

"You _think_ she's still wearing them," I repeated, deadpan. He nodded vigorously. "You'd better hope she's still wearing them if she's still in the area." I shook my head, gesturing at the door. "Go on then. She couldn't have gotten that far."

"Yes, Visser." 

I counted off a minute before getting up from where I'd situated myself behind the desk, then left the office. The hallway was empty for the moment, and I considered it for a moment longer before saying, <Hey, Marco. If you were making a run for it and were trying to avoid running into anyone, where would you go first?>

<Probably the roof.>

<Sounds about right to me.> I turned and headed for the stairs. They were quicker than the elevator, which probably would have been in use, anyway.

I don't know what I thought I was going to do. Probably nothing helpful. I didn't particularly want to see Rachel continue on as a Controller. I also didn't particularly want to see her end up like she'd been in Steph's memory--maimed and broken and bitter--even if I didn't understand how that could happen in reality. Even so, I wasn't intending to _help_ her, either.

I should have stayed in my office. It wouldn't have changed a thing, but at least I wouldn't have had to see it.

It was only a couple flights of stairs up to the roof. There was a door at the very top of the stairs--still outfitted with an old, dingy sign that said "Authorized Personnel Only," though the door was unlocked.

It was a flat roof, with a low wall going around the perimeter. When I exited the stairwell, I didn't see immediately see anyone else. It couldn't be very long before someone else thought to check up here, I reasoned. I just got there first.

I wasn't actually expecting to find her. Either she'd found a way to break free and was long gone, or she hadn't and was probably still somewhere in the building. Or out on the street. The fact that she'd gotten anywhere, at all, was nearly inconceivable--the whole _point_ was to _incapacitate_ \--but it was Rachel. Very little would surprise me.

The stairs let us out on the center of the roof. There wasn't much of a view from here, just more concrete on all sides, which, even by apocalypse standards, wasn't very glamorous. I turned and scanned the area before moving toward the back of the building.

And then, just as I rounded the back of the stairs' exit, there she was. Perched on the wall, looking down at the street below, poised like a gymnast mounting a balance beam. Her hands were still shackled together in front of her. 

<Shit.>

<What?> I took a tentative step forward. She hadn't noticed me yet. "Rachel?"

She turned then, but she didn't say anything. Her face was tomato-red, hair wild around her, and as I drew nearer I could see that she was visibily shaking. Even so, even clearly in pain, her expression was oddly, disconcertingly calm.

<She's going to jump,> Marco said, his tone somehow both horrified and unsurprised at the same time. _Free or dead._

I kept walking closer, and she let me, though she still didn't say anything. Maybe she couldn't. Those things made it hard to concentrate on more than just staying upright. "Looks like you've got nowhere else to go," I said, trying to keep my voice steady past my dry throat and the mounting realization that Marco was right. "You can't morph with those cuffs on, there's no place to run to." I took another step forward, holding out a hand in what I hoped was a placating gesture. "Whatever you're thinking of doing's not worth it."

Rachel started to rise from her crouch, and for a second, I thought maybe she'd rethink it. I was not the right person to talk anyone down from a ledge. Not like this, anyway. Not when I couldn't think of a particularly convincing argument not to jump. _At least then this nightmare's over._

Rachel looked behind her, then back at me. "Isn't it?"

Before I could answer, I heard the sound of the stairwell door opening behind me. I turned, for just a moment, to see who had finally decided to check up here. Just a second. Then I heard a little whooshing sound, and a yell, and when I turned back, Rachel was already disappearing over the side of the building. 

"No!" 

* * *

_Day 530_

You know, I did a lot of thinking in those days, right after Rachel decided a ten-story freefall was a better fate than life as host to a Yeerk visser. A lot of thinking, and a lot of wondering. Wondering if I could have done something. Wondering if I _should_ have done something. Wondering if this might finally be it, if this was one screw-up too far, one lost Animorph too many, and someone would finally decide to get rid of me. Wondering, when that seemed like it wasn't going to happen, if I shouldn't just escape into a Pool and hide for the next eight years and change. Just send Marco and Erek off somewhere they could be of actual use, and probably a lot happier--or as happy as anyone could be these days, anyway. 

Thought about running away from it all. I really did. In the end, I ended up exactly where I was always going to--back in my Manhattan office, sitting by and letting the messes sort themselves out. There were reports on my desk I needed to go through. A very angry Visser Seven to deal with. A million and ten things that needed doing, and all I could do just then was sit on the floor, looking out my office windows, knees pulled to my chest, wondering how long I could feasibly stay here until someone noticed or said anything. I'd fed that morning. I didn't _have_ to move until Marco got hungry, technically.

Marco tried to talk to me. I tried to respond. We eventually fell into weary silence. Neither of us had ever been any good at talking about our feelings, and they were far, far too complicated for us to try now. 

_Knock, knock, knock._

_Knock, knock, knock._

"Enter."

I didn't turn around, though in the window's reflection, I could watch Erek enter the office and close the door behind him. He didn't comment on my position. 

"Well?" I prompted.

"She was in Phoenix," Erek confirmed. "She seems to have moved on by now, but she made contacts there that could confirm it was really her."

"And those contacts can be trusted?"

"Yes."

I nodded. We were never sure that someone wasn't listening. Especially at times like this, it paid to be guarded. We'd done this enough, though, that by now we could pretty well understand each other.

Erek moved closer, until he was just behind me. I tilted my head back slightly to look up at him. I thought he looked sad. "You've heard."

"Yes." I turned back to the window, leaning my chin on my knees. Erek was quiet for a moment, and then added, "They say there wasn't a body."

"No." There wouldn't have been, I supposed. I mean, _logically,_ there should have been. But there wasn't. I didn't know why I expected anything to be logical anymore, honestly.

<So she might not be dead.>

<Maybe.> I'd thought about that, too. Not for the first time, I wondered if anything I thought I knew about this hell universe still counted, or if my own personal fuck-ups had changed its purpose. It certainly _felt_ like my own personal hell, tailor-made just for me, most days. Maybe it was more complicated than that, though. _Probably_ it was a lot more complicated than that. 

Regardless, this still felt like shit. That, at least, was pretty fucking clear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually think Priton would be a good person to talk someone down off a ledge, under normal circumstances. Really, the best thing he could have done in this situation was not leave his office at all.
> 
> Going Back's 41 has gone through enough development at this point that it probably counts as a very loose AU of the AU that already exists in canon. Priton doesn't remember what happens to Rachel prior to Jake's whole deal happening because, according to Cassie, Rachel died rather than be taken. Clearly, that's not what happens in Going Back. To be fair, canon contradicts itself later in the book. At any rate, ambiguity is what we get here.
> 
> Where in the world is GB!Steph? - Priton probably figures out early on that some rumors about GB!Steph sightings are more likely to be true than others. In this case, my stepdad's mom and grandma lived in Phoenix circa 2001, and it's a place I've actually been to.


	8. Las Vegas

**_Steph_ **

_Day 865_

The thing I never really understood or appreciated about the western part of the country--when you got out past the midwestern cities and get onto the plains and then the mountains and then the desert, before you got nearer to the coast and things started getting crowded again--was how  _ big  _ and how  _ empty  _ it was. How you could go miles and miles and hardly see a soul.

Granted, it probably looked a bit different now--emptier, anyway--than it would have otherwise. There were outposts, of course, especially around the ruins of places like Las Vegas and Denver, and we’d heard rumors that there was something down in New Mexico, near Roswell, because I guess someone had a sense of humor. I had a feeling I knew whose idea it had been, which visser probably appreciated the sweet irony of it.

Anyway, we steered well clear of Roswell.

“We” at the moment weren’t much of a group. There were just three of us, held together mostly by a need for safety and a little companionship to stave off the biting edge of loneliness that came with being some of the few free humans left on Earth. These kinds of alliances never lasted very long. For one thing, I had an ultimate destination in mind beyond “somewhere safe,” and there was only so long I was willing to stay in one place or another. For another, there was always the chance of being discovered and captured--or killed. Parting ways before that happened was always easier. 

And it’s not like I ever really felt safe, anyway. I’d run into Erek twice since that first awful time. Each time, it was a confusing cocktail of feelings--the relief of a familiar face. The warm reassurance of feeling like he was checking up on me. The twisting fear that his arrival was also a warning--if he knew where I was, then the Yeerks knew where I was. One, particular,  _ specific  _ Yeerk knew where I was.

It would have helped, probably, if I wasn’t so often in places that had once held some emotional tie. The first time, I’d still been in California, not terribly far from Sacramento. The second time, I’d gotten lucky and stowed away on a transport down to Phoenix. I didn’t even really mean to gravitate towards these places. Really, I didn’t. 

I’d never been to Las Vegas before, to be fair. I’d had family out here once, I thought, though I’d never met them. Elderly relatives who didn’t travel much, but who were always kind and interested whenever my mom would call them and then pass me the phone to say hello. It was a place I would have liked to go someday. Maybe that was too obscure a connection, because it had been close to a month now, and there’d been no sign of Erek. 

Hideouts were always a crap shoot. Sometimes you’d find a natural one, like a cave, if you were far enough out from civilization. Sometimes it meant spending a night in an abandoned building on the outskirts of a city, though those always came with extra danger--not just because of proximity to other people, but because those places tended to be unstable. To say it had been surprising to find a genuine underground bunker, of all things, is an understatement.

It wasn’t very big--I don’t think it had been meant to hold more than one or two people and their stuff--and it was empty, with a thick layer of dust on everything telling us that whoever had built it was long gone. There were still metal shelves along the walls, which told me no one else had been down here since it was abandoned--this was the apocalypse, you didn’t just leave valuable resources lying around--and there was an old-fashioned bedroll, like something out of a cowboy movie, tucked into a corner. We took turns sleeping on it.

There were other free humans, of course. Not a lot, mind you. Aside from Peter and Isaac, I hadn’t run into anyone else in awhile. Part of that was probably because of the aforementioned big, empty spaces I was traveling through.

There was someone else in the same area as us. A family, it sounded like, though we’d only interacted with one individual. They’d been by twice before, to barter and exchange information. I’d missed them both times, but on the third and last time, I was down in the bunker when they came.

Peter went topside to talk. He knew them by now, having been the one to do this before. The last time, a couple weeks earlier, when I’d asked what they were like, he’d told me, with great assurance, “Ex-Controller.”

“They told you that?”

“Nah. Didn’t have to. He’s carrying around one of those standard issue dracon beams they give all the foot soldier type Yeerks.”

“He could’ve stolen it. Or killed somebody for it.”

Peter had shrugged. “Maybe. Didn’t seem like the killing type, though.”

I was sitting at the foot of the bunker’s ladder, using the light coming down from the open hatch to try and read the one map we had. It was yellowed and ripped and had clearly been there since before the invasion went public, but it was giving me a vague idea of where I was going next, which was something. Isaac was taking his turn on the bedroll, and so it was quiet enough that some of Peter and the other free human’s conversation filtered down to me.

It was hard to concentrate on what I was doing while listening to them. It wasn’t what they were saying exactly--Peter was trying to barter for food that wasn’t canned beans--but there was something about the other voice that was weirdly familiar in a way I couldn’t place.

Finally, I put the map aside and got up. I climbed the ladder up until my head poked out and I could see the two men standing a few feet away. Peter had his back to me, and for a second he was all I could see. But then he shifted to one side, and I saw him. Shorter, older, with that weathered look of someone who’s been living in the wilderness for years. And I could see, there on his belt, was indeed a standard issue dracon beam--and I was pretty sure I knew who it had belonged to originally, too.

“ _ Ben _ ?”

They both turned to look at me, and for a second Ben’s face only showed confusion, and then recognition, and then a confusing mix of emotions that I couldn’t stop to name. 

Peter looked between us, then said, ever so eloquent, “Well shit.”

I climbed the rest of the way out of the bunker, took several steps forward, then stopped. There was an odd, achy feeling in my chest. I looked at Peter. He was staring at us like he was waiting for something to happen. I gestured vaguely at the bunker. “Could you…?”

“Oh. Right. I’ll… see if Isaac’s up, I guess.” Peter shot us another curious look before disappearing down the ladder.

“Let’s walk,” I said, glancing up at Ben, then away again.

“Yeah. Okay.”

We walked for a while, keeping the still open hatch of my temporary hideout in view, but far enough away to avoid eavesdropping. We didn’t say anything for a minute, and I tried, and failed, not to think too hard about anything at all.

He shouldn’t be here. It was too convenient. Too perfectly aligned. The world was big and even if two people who’d known each other  _ before  _ were still, by some statistically unlikely miracle, free of Yeerk control, it was so unlikely that they would find each other that it was borderline impossible to happen by random chance. It felt like a trap, laid out by whoever’s sick idea this whole thing was, but I wasn’t sure who the trap was for--if it’d been meant for me, or if I’d just lucked my way into it. Either way, here I was, walking in willingly .

It shouldn’t have hurt to see him. We didn’t even know each other. We’d had one awful encounter that had utterly changed our lives, and neither of us had any say in it. If anything, he should have been little more than the face of a traumatic event. A representative image, not a person. I didn’t  _ know  _ him. 

Even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t true.

We stopped walking and Ben turned to me. “It’s strange, I don’t even know your name.”

For a second, I thought about not telling him. I don’t know why. It’s not like it would have made a difference. “Steph,” I said. I crossed my arms over my chest and shivered, though it wasn’t at all cold. “We didn’t really have time for introductions last time.”

“No.” Ben looked like he was going to say something more about that, then seemed to change his mind, shaking his head. Instead, he said, “We’d heard a rumor that there was a free Animorph still, and I’d wondered… but you know.”

Yeah. There’d been a lot of conflicting information making the rounds, especially in the earliest days. “But you’re okay, though? Your family? Janet, Amy?”

“As good as we can be, yeah,” Ben said. “We’ve, uh, actually been out here since… not long after I last saw you. Had to get away from the Empire, you know.” I nodded. “My sister-in-law used to live out this way. Thought we’d at least be in a place we knew somewhat.”

“You didn’t…  _ actually  _ go to stay with family, did you?” 

Ben laughed. “No, we weren’t that dumb.” For some reason, this made me relax a little. “Not that it matters now, I guess.”

We stood there for another long minute. There wasn’t very much to say, I guess. Well, no. There was a great deal to say--it’s just that not much of it mattered anymore.

“I wanted to tell you,” Ben said suddenly, grimacing. “I mean, I thought that if I ever saw you again, I wanted to say… how sorry I am. For what happened.”

I stared at him, not sure for a second what to say. Ben, of all people, had nothing to apologize to me for. Finally, I said, “Thank you.”

He nodded. “And… listen, I shouldn’t ask. I don’t know what things have been like, and I understand if it’s a sore subject--”

“It’s okay,” I said, though in truth I was bracing myself. I was fairly sure I knew what he was going to ask, and I knew, even before he did, that I was going to lie. “Whatever you want to know, Ben, just ask.”

Ben took a deep breath. “Priton?”

I didn’t flinch. Part of me was absurdly proud that I didn’t flinch at his name. “He freed me,” I told him. “Before… well,  _ before. _ Almost two years after we saw each other last. He--we--” My voice faltered, and I couldn’t make myself say anything more. That much, at least, was the truth. Ben’s expression turned relieved--and hopeful--and I had to look away. 

“Well, I’m glad. That it worked out okay, in the end. At least something did.” I didn’t respond. “You know, it’s kind of funny.”

“What is?”

“We weren’t even supposed to be in the area that day.” 

My gaze flew back up to Ben’s face, which had turned oddly thoughtful now. “What?”

“The library, I mean. We hadn’t been planning to go there at all. Priton just decided suddenly that we needed to go there.” Ben shook his head. “It was like he was possessed. And then there you were. It was so strange.”

“Strange,” I echoed. “Yeah.”  I had never heard this. I couldn’t remember, now, wondering how Priton had come upon me from his end, only thinking of the stupid mistakes I’d made that had led me there.

It hadn’t really occurred to me that someone could have planned it.

“We should probably get back to our respective…” Ben gestured vaguely in the direction of the bunker.

“Right. Yeah.” 

“Tell your friend I’m sorry we couldn’t cut a deal. Maybe next time.”

“I will.” I hesitated, then said, “I’ll probably be moving on soon. I’ve got… places I need to go.”

“Oh.” Ben seemed to mull this over for a moment, then he stuck out his hand. After a second, I took it. “Good luck, then. I’m sorry we couldn’t meet under better circumstances.”

“Me too. Goodbye, Ben.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where in the world is GB!Steph?: So, personal story time. My parents got divorced in 1995, and most of my mom's side of the family wouldn't speak to us for years, and really, fences were only just starting to mend by 2001 when GB!Steph would have left. Little gestures went a long way, hence why she'd have fond feelings about relatives she's never met and has only spoken to. I've met them since, it all got a lot better.
> 
> Ah, Ben. Well, here is our answer, at last, for where he's been hiding. Also, back in 33 I mentioned that I wrote an AU a while back where GB!Steph and Ben got to talk to each other during that book, and that their conversation got used elsewhere. That's what this chapter is. It was really about time someone let GB!Steph in on what Priton has known since the beginning, 'cause you know he was never going to tell her otherwise.
> 
> I pre-wrote this and another chapter in October 2019 for my friend's birthday. Pros of being my friend: You get to read chapters half a year before everyone else. Cons of being my friend: none, I'm an angel.


	9. Cassie

_**Steph** _

_Day 1399_

I hadn't really meant to stay for this long. Mostly, I'd headed south to avoid the colder winter temperatures--it was, I thought, late January at this point--and I might have had a very vague... _idea_ that I wanted to see the coast again. It was a strange feeling, a bit. I hadn't grown up near the beach--the closest equivalent was the Great Lakes, which wasn't quite the same and I hadn't spent a significant amount of time at the beach despite its proximity anyway--but I don't know. I suppose after three years, there was a sense of homesickness now that I couldn't shake.

I'd come down to Galveston, mostly because it was the closest coast. There were also rumors of a resistance group in Houston, though I hadn't been there yet to confirm it, and wasn't sure yet that I was going to. Not because I didn't want to see other free humans. Hopping between small groups was mostly how I was keeping any semblance of sanity these days. But it also seemed to make me easier to find, and I didn't think I'd have the mental energy to deal with a visit from Erek any time soon.

The good news was, he wasn't likely to come looking for me _here_.

Here on this island, fifty or so miles from the city, when I arrived I found signs, not of human resistance, but of the Evolutionist Front.

I almost turned around and left immediately, before they could find out I was there. I didn't know why they were there, I didn't _care_. I had plenty enough to worry about without adding crazy terrorists to the mix. On the one hand, my only experience with them before this was secondhand, through Jake's eyes, and Jake wasn't exactly _unbiased._ On the other hand, I didn't fully understand what they were after, and I _didn't want to_. Maybe I was just as biased. Probably. 

And yet.

"You spend a lot of time hanging out in the open for someone who's so badly wanted by the Empire."

I didn't turn to see Cassie--or Niss. They seemed to switch between themselves that it didn't seem worth it to try to differentiate most of the time--as she sidled up next to me. I'd found a spot overlooking the beach, and was leaning against the railing overlooking the water. It probably would have been a nice spot, once upon a time. 

"I think you're overestimating me." I wasn't looking at her, so I couldn't see her expression, though I could imagine it. If I were her, I'd probably be skeptical, too. Being morph-capable wasn't such a hot commodity anymore when they were so easy to come by. The Andalite home world was long fallen by now, there was no shortage of morphing cubes around the Empire.

Even so, there was something about having Animorphs who were still very much at large, so to speak, that seemed to be a sore point. I only ever really heard snippets of gossip, from occasional groups of free humans, and sometimes from Erek, the two or three times a year he tracked me down. Though, Erek was usually remarkably cagey about gossip, and I could never tell if it was because we were skirting around things he wasn't allowed to tell me, or if he just didn't want to for some reason. Sometimes that didn't seem fair--we were in a terrible situation, and I _knew_ that, I knew what Yeerk control felt like, even if it looked different for Erek than it had for me, and I knew not all his choices were or could be his own, just as much as I knew he wouldn't actively do anything to hurt me, if he had the choice. That was a lot more than I could currently say about most people I knew.

But then I'd also remember that a lot of things now were the dire domino effects of Erek deciding to keep quiet about a single rogue Yeerk, just to see what would happen. And even though he'd apologized and I'd believed him--still believed him--it reminded me that my best friend was a five thousand year old alien who would probably still be here when the rest of us were all long, long gone. That had to do _something_ to your perspective.

One thing Erek _had_ told me was that Priton wasn't too crazy about the EF. Which made perfect sense even if you didn't know where _that_ was going. But I'd noticed a shift recently, in the last couple times I'd seen Erek, in how they intersected with often impromptu visits to the area from the Visser and his entourage, instead of how it used to be, when it seemed like I'd just get Erek on his own. I didn't really know what that meant. Or I didn't want to think about what it might mean, anyway.

All things considered, Galveston felt like a haven right about then.

"What's this?"

"What?" I turned in time to see Niss--because, I thought belatedly, it must have been. I'd think a human host would _know better_ \--step up right into my space and grab my arm. "Hey!"

Niss ignored my attempts to jerk my arm back, instead pushing down the sleeve of my morphing suit around my wrist until we could both clearly see my scar, still as prominent as it had been more than three years ago now when I'd gotten it. "Where'd _you_ get _this_?"

I finally managed to yank my arm free and took several steps back. Niss let me go, though she still looked expectant. I crossed my arms over my chest. "Where do you _think_ I fucking got it?" 

She shrugged. "There were a lot of rumors floating around in the early days. It was hard to tell what was real and what wasn't."

She didn't elaborate, so I wasn't sure what rumors exactly she meant, though I suppose I could imagine. "Yeah. Well. There you go, one mystery solved, I guess?"

"Sure." She was still looking at me like she was waiting for something, but when I didn't say anything else--when I didn't know what else she _wanted_ me to say--she turned away. "How long did you say you were sticking around?"

I hadn't said, because I never knew how I would stay anywhere. "Couple days, probably. I should keep moving on."

"Mm. Well. You can stay with the EF as long as you're here, if you want. I'm sure there's a lot we can talk about." She tilted her head to indicate back the way we'd both come from. "I have work to do, if you're coming."

What I actually wanted to do just then was _leave_ , but instead I just said,"Right. Sure," and turned to follow Niss/Cassie back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 9 started out as a very different chapter. It started out as the Ax-centric chapter, and then it turned out that I didn't actually have a whole lot to write about that. It's usually a bad sign if a chapter is boring the writer as they write it. I'm leaving it up in the air for now if I actually write an Ax chapter, in case I think of something actually worthwhile to occur in it, though there was actual, useful information that I wrote that I now need to find places for, I guess. 
> 
> That said, this Part has somehow gained an extra chapter from what I originally planned. Mostly because I looked at what I had left to write and realized I hadn't given myself enough chapters to write it in. I might change it again, depending on how some future chapters go. 
> 
> Where in the world is GB!Steph?: Okay, GB!Steph has never been to Galveston, Texas, but _I_ have. I did also have a phase in middle school where I liked old country music a lot, so please know that GB!Steph absolutely has "Galveston" by Glen Campbell stuck in her head intermittently the whole time she's there. On an actual, serious "why did I send her there specifically" note: for several years, I had many friends from the Animorphs fandom who lived in Houston, some of whom were involved in writing an Animorphs RP that involved a rebel Yeerk group. None of those friends actually lived in Houston, I don't think, in the very early 2000s, but it's fun to insert it in anyway.
> 
> I've spent a lot of my downtime in between writing chapters playing D&D, and it has occurred to me that the way I write Erek in Going Back, his Character Alignment here is probably Chaotic Neutral. I haven't given much thought to what it is in canon. Notably, it's also the alignment of Priton. Say what you want about GB!Steph's life choices, she has a _type_. A... weirdly specific type.


	10. Marco, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Some next-tier non-consensual mind control of a non-POV character, though described from the POV of the guy who can see what it looks like in his brain. 
> 
> Also CW: depression and disassociation. No one's having a good time today.

**_Priton_ **

_Day 1807_

So, funny thing about consequences. They tend to _stack._ And not always the way you think they're going to, either. Weird as it sounds, after awhile you get kind of used to the universe trying to screw you over, and it becomes less about _if_ and more about _when_ , and then even knowing that, sometimes you still can't prepare and you still get steamrolled anyway. 

When the Empire finally discontinued the Anti-Morphing cuffs, it made a lot of sense. They'd been a bust. Or, well, they'd worked just fine on scores of morph-capable hosts, but they left scars if left on for too long and hadn't managed to restrain not one but _two_ Animorphs, so it was clearly time to at least explore other options. Of course, Steph hadn't escaped on her own, and Rachel was... well, _Rachel,_ but presumably any option that doesn't involve _literal torture_ has to be an improvement, right? 

Right?

Ten years in charge of basically hell and you're going to make a lot of terrible, terrible decisions. That's just the nature of the beast. Not a lot I could do about it--there was, in fact, a nice long line of more ambitious Yeerks who would be more than happy to make those terrible decisions in my place, which is in fact what would happen if I did the wrong thing. 

Or, fuck, maybe not. Maybe I was immune. It certainly seemed like an ironic enough punishment.

The proposed solution wasn't a surprise, exactly. I knew there'd be pills or whatever for "dealing" with host rebellion--if you could even call what little they could do rebelling--by the time Jake would be kicking around like a very confused sleepwalker. The finer details of what they did either hadn't been clear or weren't particularly memorable, but I guess that was the benefit of actually having to live through it.

There was a mission, a long time ago, during a stint when the Empire had the bright idea to try to destroy humans' free will to make them easier to infest. Whatever they thought they were trying to do didn't work, obviously, but honestly, I never really understood the point in the first place. Hosts _already_ don't have free will. That's how infestation _works._ They can't move or speak or _do_ anything except think without the Yeerk's say-so, and no matter how kind a Yeerk is or how good a relationship they might have with their host, the Yeerk is always the one with ultimate power, only really mitigated--at least in _good_ Yeerk-Host scenarios--by trust.

<Still dark as hell,> Marco had told me. <Either way.>

<Well. Yeah. That's pretty par for the course when your Empire base is all slave labor by default.>

Hosts without free will isn't a frightening new idea--that's _normal._ The thing the Empire really wanted, and would have to come around to eventually, given enough time and resources, were hosts who were _docile._ And now, with nothing _but_ time and resources at hand, they could finally make it happen.

I wasn't a scientist. I didn't make the drugs or test them or any of that, but reports about them still came across my desk, and I was the one who approved them, and approved their specific use for morph-capable hosts, so really... Really, I had no one to blame but myself.

We made it work for awhile. I sent Erek off on fewer long trips--at least, fewer trips alone. I was getting a reputation for being the kind of Visser who popped up at random outposts for Surprise Inspections--though, to be fair, those outposts were usually located in areas of rebel activity, so if they were surprised, that was on _them_. 

Finding Steph wasn't the only thing I sent Erek off on "errands" for, though. It was, occasionally, awfully convenient to have someone else stand-in for me when I couldn't be in two places at once, or when I needed the extra intimidation that sending Visser Two's personal Chee guard could bring me. Or Erek just went _as_ me, cutting out the middle man completely. Even ignoring the obvious benefits of holograms and voice mimicry, he was almost disturbingly good at that. I genuinely wasn't sure what made it more disquieting--the natural reflexive--and, fine, okay, yes, _hypocritical--_ instinct of not liking the sight of someone else acting like you with no one else the wiser, or the simple fact that Erek knew me well enough to that _I_ could barely notice the difference. It was the kind of thing I'd started _before,_ when we didn't have the same issues, when I couldn't be somewhere, but needed someone to go in my stead that I could trust. There wasn't anyone else for times like those.

Probably, I should have known that would only work out for us for so long. But we made it a _good_ long while before it became an issue. A couple years almost. That was more than enough time to get a little complacent, to get into a routine, and you might be amazed how painfully easy it was to let one worry slip through the cracks when you had about a thousand different one on a daily basis.

So I sent Erek off to Boston on a perfectly routine check-up of some projects that I didn't particularly care about but apparently needed some oversight. It shouldn't have taken more than a day or two. It was a very quick trip. Until it wasn't. 

I wasn't worried about Erek--he was a big boy who could take care of himself, and with frankly disturbing efficiency, if needed. That wasn't the issue. 

Under any other circumstances, with any other outcome, it might have been funny. It was like a terrible comedy of errors. I spent most of the day--the third day without word yet from Erek--in meetings with Yeerks of high enough rank that I couldn't easily intimidate my way out of it. When, after several hours of mostly posturing and a little Empire business, I could finally excuse myself to feed, two _came with me._ Two vissers who knew I didn't have my Chee guard. Two vissers who'd think it was awfully strange if I went off to my private pool completely unattended.

Which was how I ended up in an infestation room holding a cup of water and two of the most misleadingly innocuous looking little white pills in the universe, staring down an Andalite-Controller who inexplicably had a bedside manner more akin to every no-nonsense human healthcare worker I'd ever met, and less like the Andalite warrior he looked like. 

"This isn't necessary."

<We are not allowed to take chances with dangerous hosts,> the Andalite said. I couldn't remember his name. He was apparently ranked highly enough to be considered trustworthy with the leader of Earth. <Even voluntary ones.> He paused, swiveling his eyestalks around at me in what I interpreted in a vague equivalent of a skeptical eyebrow raise. < _Is_ your host voluntary?>

The answer to that was... complicated. Mostly because that word was almost completely meaningless these days. And also because I knew that, given a few saner viable options, Marco wouldn't have been there. On the other hand, it wasn't like I made an honest effort to keep him. He wasn't restrained when it was just us and Erek during feedings. And Erek's orders in case Marco decided to escape had nothing to do with stopping him. Because I didn't want him miserable as a host anymore than I'd wanted Ben or Steph miserable as hosts, and I also didn't want what the Empire would do to _me_ if he escaped and was caught later. So. Contingency plans. _Disturbingly efficient_ contingency plans.

What I said to the Andalite was, "Obviously not."

<There's nothing you can do,> Marco said. He didn't sound particularly happy. Of course he didn't sound happy. But I knew a _don't be an idiot_ tone when I heard it. 

Right. I guess these things wore off, anyway, or they wouldn't continuously hand them out at feedings, so how bad could it really be? "Fine. Down the hatch, then."

* * *

 _How bad could it be?_ One of these days, I was going to learn to stop asking questions like that.

The thing is, the change wasn't that immediately apparent. It's not like we were in a constant struggle for control. We'd been at this for five years now--longer, by far, than I had been with any other host--we could _communicate_. On that, at the very least, because I really didn't have a problem with the idea of giving Marco control sometimes--he was, quite frankly, better at a lot of things than I was, and why fake it with what I could see in his head when I had the real deal willing to do the work for me? That was worth the anxiety trade off giving up some control gave me. But we had to be _careful_ , because we weren't just some average schmoes in the Empire, or even an average high ranking Visser and their host. We were Visser Two, leader of the Yeerk colony on Earth. Hence, the need for communication.

Except now Marco didn't talk to me.

It was, in fact, disturbingly quiet in my head when I reinfested Marco, and as I went about the rest of my day. It wasn't like I was being given the silent treatment--I've gotten that, plenty of times. And it wasn't like being entirely alone, either, because I could still feel Marco in there with me, as his own separate presence. I could still access all his memories and his knowledge, could still feel that general... _otherness_ of having another mind alongside mine. It's just that trying to talk didn't really yield anything. And for the most part, I couldn't hear _him._ I couldn't hear that inescapable background noise of a host's thoughts, and at first I panicked, thinking that somehow that connection had been cut, even though I couldn't fathom _how--_ I was pretty sure that part was connected to other things that were working just fine--until I realized. It wasn't like he was talking and I couldn't hear him.

It was like he just wasn't _there_. 

I spent the rest of the day, and most of the next, feeling like I was a plug that had been disconnected. Nothing _felt_ right, down to my own body, like my skin was a set of clothes I'd put on that morning, and I'd grabbed someone else's by mistake. Which, you know, in a way, it _was._ It _wasn't_ really mine, I was, for all intents and purposes, _borrowing_ it, a fact that was usually fine enough, but somehow amplified now in this bizarre half-stasis.

I had a very vague notion of what happened in that next day and a half. Mostly, it felt like watching someone else go through the motions of my life. A nice irony. Someone was probably laughing their ass off at me, right that second. _Poor Priton,_ I imagined them saying. _What a tragedy, getting to feel even a_ fraction _of what other people feel all the fucking time._ A villain who feels bad isn't less of a villain, no one cries over bad things happening to them. It wasn't that bad, I told myself. At least I wasn't a person-shaped shell who couldn't seem to think for himself, as far as I could tell.

At the end of the second day, when I went back to my quarters for the night, I felt like I needed _something_. Something to distract me. There was very little in my actual room, which was nearly as sparse as every other Yeerk's, even if they were the largest. Most quarters weren't much more than cubicles. Being in charge meant I got perks like having a place big enough have real furniture in it. Not that I used it much. It had a bed and a cupboard and a desk, and there was a tiny bathroom with a narrow shower stall. It was a place to sleep, and that was really it, but it was also _private,_ at least when I regularly checked it for bugs. And I was, as ever, a dirty human lover who kept hold of _some_ human comforts.

That night, after doing two sweeps of the room and the bathroom--usually overkill, but fuck if I wasn't paranoid _now_ \--I stripped off my morphing suit, kicking it across the floor to land in a messy heap that felt oddly satisfy. In the cupboard, behind a row of more morphing suits--all identical. Even the boss got to wear the uniform--I found what I really wanted. A thin white t-shirt and a pair of old, soft grey sweatpants. 

There was something very practical about my everyday clothes doubling as my morphing outfit. Usually, I appreciated not having to worry about stashing my outer clothes somewhere before morphing, or having to change, or ruining a shirt I liked because I really needed to morph a gorilla _right that second_. But just then it felt too restrictive, too claustrophobic. So I put on old, comfy clothes that I kept specifically for moments like this. I'd never felt or been so completely alone during moments like this before, but the routine helped. A little.

I tried to sleep. I lay down on my bed for a long time, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the silence, trying to focus on the static hum of Marco's brain to try and discern if something was actually going on that I couldn't discern somehow. 

After awhile, I got up to pace. There wasn't much room for it, but it was something to do, and having something to do helped. A little. When I paused at the window--a narrow, single-paned affair that didn't actually open--I could see the glowing lights of the city. At night, you could almost pretend sometimes that it all still looked normal, if you tried hard enough. Those lights moving around in the sky could be a plane. If I stood at just the right angle at my window, I could block out the platform between the World Trade Center towers and pretend there wasn't a bug fighter docked there right now. 

I leaned my head against the window, closing my eyes. "Hey," I said, to no one, to the ether, to whoever was in charge of my own personal hell. "You know, if this is someone's idea of what a 'bloodless solution' looks like, you can shove it up your ass." I punctuated this statement by slapping my hand against the window glass before turning away, though it might have had more effect if I didn't sound so wrung out. 

I'll admit, though, the sudden, loud knocking on my door about a second later was a little more of a response than I was expecting.

I stood staring dumbly at the door for several seconds as the pounding stopped, too surprised to respond right away. I hadn't looked at a clock in awhile, but I was vaguely aware that it was probably very late at this point. 

The knocking started again, and now that I was focused on it, I could more easily count out the six sharp raps on door before I heard, " _Visser!_ It's Erek!" 

Christ. "Okay, all right. Enter!"

The door slid open easily--voice and thought speak commands were useful sometimes--revealing Erek, who hurried inside before the door slid behind him again. He stopped just inside, and for a second I thought I could almost see the struggle between his usual stoicism, and expressing what he was probably actually thinking. Something probably like _Priton, what the fuck now?_

I waved. "'Lo," I said simply, before turning away and walking over to the bed and collapsing down onto it, on my back, staring up at the ceiling, with my legs hanging off the side.

"What happened?" I heard Erek move closer, and a moment later, his face appeared above me, expression mostly unreadable now.

"Nothing happened." I shrugged. "You weren't here, so they gave me drugs that made the voice in my head go away." I pushed myself up onto one elbow. "I did a bad thing. So it's making me feel bad, 's all." That wasn't anything new, though, was it? Every time I had ever tried to protect anyone I cared about, I just hurt them worse than if I'd left them alone in the first place. Being terrible was about the only thing I was apparently good at.

Erek sighed heavily. "Have you slept?" 

"Can't sleep. Too quiet." 

"Have you eaten?"

"'Course I've eaten," I said. "I haven't starved yet, have I?"

"I meant have you fed _Marco."_

"Oh." I paused for a moment to think, and then that moment stretched for a little too long, because, honestly, I couldn't remember. Logically, I knew I must have done. There was a computer-controlled panel on the wall in this room that delivered breakfast every morning, so I'd eaten at least once.

"Right," Erek said. "Stay there." He turned then and disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the sound of water being turned on, running for a few seconds, and then turning off again, and then Erek came back out with a plastic cup filled with water. "Here. Drink."

I didn't move, just blinked stupidly at him.

Reaching down, Erek took hold of the arm that wasn't currently holding me up. I flinched, but let him force the cup into my hand. " _Drink."_

"Yes, sir." I lifted the cup in a mock toast before taking a dutiful sip. That seemed to satisfy Erek for the moment, since there wasn't much else that could be done in the middle of the night. I settled back to sip slowly, mostly for something else to focus on. Everything tonight was mostly about distraction. "Boston didn't go well, I'm guessing?"

"Someone tried to kill you," Erek informed me, his tone matter-of-fact. 

"Oh. Huh." I considered that. "That does always make things interesting." It was hard to tell, with the dim light and his usual poker face, but I had the distinct impression that Erek was unamused. "Anyone important?"

"Doesn't seem like it, though they weren't exactly forthcoming."

No, they usually weren't. That didn't often save people from summary execution in the Empire, at least not for assassination attempts. 

We sat in silence for awhile as I dutifully finished my water, and then again when Erek went to refill the cup and handed it back to me wordlessly. There was more to talk about, probably, more I needed to ask after, but now wasn't the time. I wasn't sure I'd have retained any of it, anyway.

When I'd finished my second cup, Erek took it from me and said, "Try to sleep. It's worse if you just don't."

"Yeah. I know." 

"And, Visser?" 

"What?" Erek only ever called me "Visser." Even in private. 

"It wears off eventually. This is just temporary."

I didn't say anything, and instead turned over to face the wall and tried, tried, _tried_ to force my body down into sleep. For a few hours of escape if nothing else.

* * *

_Day 1812_

It didn't happen all at once. Really, I couldn't really explain how it started, except that I woke up that morning, five days after it had all started, with the distinct feeling that something was _different_. It didn't feel quite so much like being alone anymore, but still not the same. Like being the only person awake in the room--you're not alone, exactly, but the other person doesn't really count as company. Still. It was _better_. It was _something_.

But it edged, little by little, toward something more, as the day went on. 

I spent most of the day in my Manhattan office, doing the kind of busy work that I should have given to someone else, but that I needed right then. Erek stood guard at the door, to make sure I was mostly undisturbed. And probably to make sure I didn't do anything stupid, though he hadn't said as much. 

Mostly, I just waited. I felt him coming back, little by little, like a light slowly growing in intensity. With each hour, there was a bit more and a bit more, until finally--

<Wha...>

I sat up sharply. Threw a look at Erek, who was already looking at me, but raised his eyebrows as if to say _yes, I'm paying attention._ <Marco?>

There was a long pause. Almost a minute. Then, <What was the thing about... bloodless solutions?>

I let out a surprised laugh, and then folded my arms on my desk, put my head down, and sobbed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it's not already obvious, we've seen [Priton's contingency plans](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16313672/chapters/39310045) before. I'd say he's probably a lot more afraid of what the Empire would do to him than what the Animorphs would have done.
> 
> Priton probably knows what an anti-hero is. I don't think he would flatter himself in thinking he is one. His views are not shared by his author. I may be projecting a lot in this chapter. Writing fanfiction is cheaper than going to therapy.
> 
> I don't think anything will ever feel quite so weird as writing a character looking out his window at the World Trade Center. In March 2005, which is when this chapter takes place.


	11. Madison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: There is nothing explicit in this, because it all happens off-screen before the chapter begins, but this chapter is the aftermath of a bad sexual experience between two consenting adults. It also deals with internalized acephobia.
> 
> Also, I would like to formally apologize to the state of Wisconsin.

**_Steph_ **

_Day 3009_

It wasn't the first time in eight years that I'd woken up next to someone else. It _was_ the first time I'd woken up naked.

It was still mostly dark when I opened my eyes, the sky visible through the windows overhead still showing the lightening grey of early dawn. When I turned my head, I could see Kai's back, rising and falling, still asleep. There were only a few inches separating us. I could have reached out and touched them if I wanted to. 

I got up, carefully, leaning down to grab my clothes as I left the corner we'd commandeered the night before.

We were camped out in the back room of a disused warehouse, and when I emerged, dressed, into the main area--surrounded by empty crates with human and alien labels--I found one of the others of our little group, Brendan, hunched over our little camp stove, trying to get it to light. 

"I don't think we're supposed to use those indoors," I told him. 

He looked up, shrugged. "Can't do it outside. Mira said." Mira was another one of this small group of free humans--there were five of us at the moment, counting me. She'd had the last watch of the night. Brendan leaned over close, his tone suddenly conspiratorial, "She said she saw a _blade ship_ heading in for the space port!" He had the absurdly wondrous look of a kid who'd never seen something so exciting, even though we both knew that wasn't _good_ news for us. Still, I kind of got it. I was pretty sure Brendan was fourteen or fifteen, though he had the wiry, gaunt look of an orphan living through an apocalypse, which made him seem younger than he was. I didn't actually know if he was an orphan, mind you. None of the adults he was traveling with were related to him, at any rate.

"Oh. Well, yeah, best to stay inside then, I guess. Just be careful."

"I know." He turned back to the stove, though he shot me a curious look over his shoulder. "Are you going on a rations run?" He held up one of the items that were scattered around him--a can of beans, the staple of any good apocalyptic hideout. "We're out of everything but this stuff."

"Sure. Don't burn the place down while I'm gone."

"Uh-huh."

I found a holster and a dracon beam from our communal stash and slipped them around my waist. Out of sight of Brendan or anyone else, I paused to focus on a morph I only really did for situations like this. It rankled some old sensibilities--or at least, made me feel like my friends would have been disappointed in me, once upon a time--but it was necessary now. I felt myself get a little taller, and I knew my hair got a little redder and not quite so dark brown or so curly, but without a mirror I couldn't see or feel much of the differences as I changed my body to look like the random human-Controller I'd acquired specifically for times like this.

Madison was just a stop on the way to other places, for all of us. The other four were on their way to Chicago to meet up with a resistance group there. I had already decided I wasn't going with them--even though I _wanted_ to, God, I _wanted_ to--but I'd been escorting them, at least since I'd found them near Des Moines a few weeks earlier.

It had been a happy surprise--for both of us--to run into Kai again. I didn't get a lot of opportunities for _happy_ reunions. Mostly, I had to leave the people I met behind, and hoped that I didn't see them again, since I could never be sure of the circumstances. But it was _nice_ , this once, to see a familiar, friendly face, someone who was genuinely pleased to see _me_. And if I felt now, so many years later, like I was ready to try explore those fluttery feelings they'd once inspired in me--and they were _willing_ , somehow, even--well. What better time than now, right? We both knew it wasn't a serious thing. But it was nice to have something good to distract me for a little while.

So I _should_ feel great right then. I should feel fucking amazing, right? That's what people made sex out to be like, anyway. 

Maybe there was something wrong with me. It _felt_ like there was something wrong with me. Or at least... at least, something felt like it didn't add up, anyway. I didn't _think_ I was confused--or, at any rate, I'd mostly convinced myself of that last night when Kai asked if I wanted to, and I said yes. I _meant_ yes. It was just the next morning now and I was left feeling like... like... 

Like what? Like I shouldn't have? Buyer's remorse for losing my virginity? Was that all this was? Or was this just what people meant when they said your first time wasn't that great, and I'd misunderstood? I didn't know. I didn't understand. And God, it was _frustrating._ Part of me just wished someone was there for me to simply _ask._ It would have made things simpler at least. 

Of course, there was _someone_ I could ask. As I left our hideout, I could see a break through the buildings around us, down the hill toward the space port. I couldn't actually see the blade ship from here, but I was sure it was still there. Not that that was going to do me any good. Of course, it might not even be his, regardless.

Well. There was one way to find out. It was why I was walking around in the open in a human morph in the first place instead of flying in closer, anyway.

Instead of taking the path I knew would lead me to where I'd told Brendan I was going--I'd still go. I was just taking a bit of a detour--I hung a left and wandered deeper into the eerily quiet industrial district we were camped in. I didn't really understand the Yeerks sometimes. They seemed as likely to repurpose human structures as they were to tear things down and rebuild them. Other times they just left them empty, like hadn't decided what they were going to do with it all yet. If there was a logic to it, it worked on some bigger scale than I was interested in figuring out. 

I walked for a few minutes, until I was well out of sight of the building I'd stayed in, though if anyone had been watching me closely, they might have gotten the distinct impression that I wasn't ambling off anywhere in particular. Mostly because I wasn't. And I couldn't tell if it was my imagination or not--it could, I acknowledged, have very well been because I _expected_ it--but I had that tingly sensation on the back of my neck like someone was watching me. 

No one survives eight years as a fugitive without a healthy--maybe--dose of paranoia. 

So I walked until I found myself down a deserted, potholed side street, lined with more warehouses like the one I'd spent the night. It was eerily quiet here, like a ghost town.

"If you're waiting for a moment when we're alone," I said aloud, glad, at least, that if I really _was_ paranoid, at least no one was around to see me, "now's probably the time."

There was a pause, and then I heard a familiar, put-upon sigh to my right, and when I turned, there, materializing next to me, was the familiar visage of Erek King. "How could you have possibly known that?"

I shrugged. "Lucky guess. And you're predictable." Erek huffed skeptically, which was probably fair. I shot him a sideways glance. "How did you even get here so fast? We _just_ got in. Rumors don't get around _that_ quickly."

Erek didn't answer for a long moment. Then he said, "I wasn't actually looking for you."

I stopped walking and turned to face him, squinting at him with my own skepticism. "Erek, you were very clearly just following me while I look like this." I made a gesture at my face which was, again, not _my_ face.

"Yes, I know." He sounded exasperated now. "And I know that face. _I_ got you that morph."

"Oh. Right. Still, what else could you could possibly want _here?"_ To be fair, I hadn't seen much of post-war Madison, but so far it wasn't particularly impressive.

"There's an outpost here."

"Sure. But it's not very big. I'm surprised their port can even handle something as big as a blade ship." Erek made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh, but was close enough that I thought I was probably right. "I mean, it's _Wisconsin."_

"Steph, I think your bias is showing." 

"I am not--" I started to protest, then stopped. "Okay, fine. Maybe a little." I crossed my arms over my chest and turned away as we started walking again. "Still," I said, after a moment, because I couldn't let it go. "What's so important?"

"Steph." This time, Erek's voice sounded tired. "Just let it go. Please."

"Okay."

We walked in silence for awhile. We were walking in a wide circle, not really going anywhere in particular. Most visits from Erek went about like this, honestly. I'd get to see him for a short while, we'd talk, and then we'd part ways until the next time, not knowing when or where that would be. He used to stay longer, at the beginning. I had distinct memories of Sacramento and Phoenix, when it was still mostly _good_ to see him, and not just a painfully awkward reminder. I remembered standing right next to him when the news came through about Rachel, when he looked at me and I knew, before he said anything, _I knew_ something terrible had happened, I at least still felt like I was tethered to something, to someone. I hadn't felt like that in a very long time since.

That wasn't Erek's fault. Or my fault, either, really. We were both just trying to survive, in our own ways. 

"You know," I said after awhile. "You can just say, 'fuck off, Steph, not everything's about you.' I promise I won't be mad."

When I looked at his face, Erek's hologram showed nothing, but I could hear the smile in his voice as he said, "I'm not going to tell you to fuck off."

"I know. But you can if you ever want to." I shrugged. "You can see why I'd get confused, though. There's not much up here at the moment." Except free humans, but that wasn't really Erek's purview, as far as I could tell. And humans with me were off-limits, anyway, at least to Erek--who did not care--and to Priton--who hadn't actually made his feelings known on the subject, but had to be _aware_. I'd lost more than a few temporary allies over the last eight years, but I couldn't blame them for those. "It's a weird place to run into each other on accident."

Erek didn't say anything for a long moment, and at first I thought he wasn't going to respond. I was ready to drop the topic entirely, but then he said, "I came up here looking for... contraband." He said "contraband" in that very careful way I recognized--the way you talk when you're trying to get around rules about what you're allowed to say or not say. 

I raised my eyebrows. "Contraband? _Really?"_ Erek shrugged. "That's... okay. Sure." 

We continued walking, mostly in silence after that. It was almost nice, I thought, to have a quiet moment. Something unexpected, without purpose. We didn't get a lot of opportunities for those. I doubted we'd get many more, at least not like this. 

Another time, I probably would have told Erek about Kai and what had happened. I was at least sure he wouldn't judge me. But it didn't feel right now. 

There was something painfully lonely about being there with my friend and knowing I couldn't really talk to him. Not like this. It was a feeling I was used to by now, but somehow it never got any easier.

By the time we made our way most of the way back to where I'd started, we hadn't done much more than run down the morphing clock. When I stopped to demorph and remorph, Erek expanded his hologram to include me without me having to ask.

"I need to get some things done," I said, vaguely. Maybe Erek had heard while he was stealthing around, or maybe he could've guessed on his own where I was off to. It didn't matter. The vagueness was part of our usual modus operandi, too. "I guess I should leave you to... contraband hunting or whatever."

"Might be more like dumpster diving," Erek mused. He was looking at me with an expression I couldn't read. "Well. I guess I'll see you soon."

"Yeah." We were both pretty predictable, probably. I started backing away, keeping Erek in my sights. "Until next time, then."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a very reasonable question to ask oneself when writing self-insert fanfiction is "how personal is too personal?" If someone else asked me about writing about their self-insert's first sexual experience, I'd probably say "sounds too personal to me." But on this, GB!Steph and I diverge completely, and not just in the obvious circumstances, so honestly, it feels more akin to writing about any ol' character's first time. To be frank, writing Priton's depressive episode last chapter was about a hundred times more personal to my real life than the beginning of this chapter.
> 
> That said. I'm asexual, I'm romantically attracted to people of all genders. This isn't exactly the path figuring that out took IRL--I was going through a different, but still very important, identity crisis at twenty-three, which is how old GB!Steph is here--but it's _a_ path it could have taken. You know. With sci-fi elements thrown in, because that's what kind of story I'm writing.
> 
> Where in the World is GB!Steph? - When I was a kid--between around 7 to 10--I was really into American Girl dolls. This was back in the day when you could only get them from catalogs that came in the mail, and they were, you know, expensive as hell, but I was too young to fully grasp that kind of concept. But once a year, in the summer, there was--and might still be? When there isn't a pandemic happening--a big warehouse sale in Madison, Wisconsin, and my dad, sister and I would make the couple hour drive up there. To be honest, I've only been back to Madison once since then, so about ninety percent of my memories of it involve warehouses. This isn't to imply that Priton has Erek looking for dolls, as funny as I think it would be.
> 
> Characters also keep mentioning Chicago. If you don't know why that is already--and haven't worked it out from context clues--it will be clear enough next chapter.


	12. Chicago

**_Priton_ **

_Day 3140_

It wasn’t the first time I’d been to Chicago. By now, I’d been here many, many times. I’d overseen the construction of the Kandrona in the Sears Tower. Supervised the building of a Yeerk Pool in Grant Park. Ordered the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier to be dismantled and its metal used for scrap. Stood on the beach, staring out at Lake Michigan, and wished some supernatural entity would rise out of the water and drag me to who the fuck knows where.

It shouldn’t matter. It was just a place. We’d never been here together, and we never would. She wasn’t even here. When Erek reported that she’d been in Madison, I had thought--well of course. She’d be coming here next. There was a pattern. At this point, I had to think it was deliberate. I wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, but it was fine. At least I knew where she was, and that she was safe and alive. And if I knew her--and I did, I knew her better than anyone could ever know her, including herself--I knew she would have come to Chicago next. 

But she wasn’t here.

It had been too long now. If she’d ever been here at all, she would have moved on by now. We had, in fact, heard rumors of sightings in other places. Michigan. Pittsburgh. One rumor had claimed to find her as far south as Savannah, which I thought was unlikely. There was an end destination in mind, and it didn’t make sense this late in the game for her to be travelling too far afield.

Of course, I was assuming she was even still alive. 

It’s funny sometimes, the things that have stayed the same. The landmarks that were still standing. Sometimes they’d been left for practical reasons--lots of historic buildings had room for offices or storage or barracks. Sometimes it was just pure luck.

Like right now, I was standing in what had once been a hotel. Had looked like a hotel, anyway, before it had been abandoned. Well, not entirely abandoned. In the early days, it had been used as a barracks, back before new, more advanced ones had been built not terribly far away. Then it’d been turned into offices. There’d been some kind of restructuring since then--I didn’t know, it was someone else’s department--and now no one seemed to know what to do with it. It was being used as storage until, I guess, someone figured something out or decided the land it was on could be put to better use another way.

For some reason I couldn’t explain, it felt eerily familiar to me. The first time I’d seen it, on my first visit to Chicago, it had been from a distance. A big, bright pink building’s kind of hard to miss. Still, it hadn’t struck me as odd so much as _oddly familiar_. Maybe I’d seen pictures of it, somewhere. In a book, probably. At the time, there’d still been residual signs around the inside that hinted at it once being a local landmark.

I didn’t really have a reason to be there now. I’d been in the area. I was feeling… nostalgic, I guess. I always did, when I was in this city. At least this was a place here that didn’t make me miss _her._

There was an Andalite-Controller stationed outside the front entrance. A guard, one who you could tell was bored and frustrated with what was obviously a useless post. She’d stood at attention, said “Of course, Visser,” when I asked to be let in, though with a tone that suggested she was baffled that I would _want_ to. 

She had also looked mildly distressed when I left Erek outside with her, but I could hardly help that.

I wasn’t there for anything specific. A souvenir, maybe, because I'd gotten into the habit of collecting those. Trinkets from the end of the world. I didn’t think I would be coming back. Not to Chicago. Not again. I’d send an underling if something came up. Or Erek, if I needed someone I trusted. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t here. It was all going to end soon enough anyway. I didn’t need to come to a place where I saw ghosts on every corner. 

I ended up in an office on the ground floor. I didn’t dare go upstairs--the power to the elevators had been cut, and you never knew how stable abandoned buildings could be. This one was probably still fine, for now, but it didn’t seem worth the risk for idle curiosity.

There were stacks of crates in the office. They didn’t interest me. But there was one anomaly--the lone piece of furniture left in the room. A desk, shoved unceremoniously into a corner. If you squinted, you could still make out the dark, ugly streak on the floor where the desk had scraped against it on its impromptu trip across the room.

I approached the desk, tilting my head to one side. I tried one of the drawers. Locked, somehow, even now. I considered for a moment, hand on one drawer’s handle, before concentrating. A moment later, coarse black fur was sprouting from my arm, and my hand grew until I couldn’t easily grip the handle anymore. I gave it a tug.

The drawer’s contents spilled out onto the floor. I poked them aside with my foot to get a better look. Files. Invoice receipts. Useless paper. I tried the next drawer. A can of air freshener. A coffee mug that broke in two when it hit the floor. In the third drawer, I found nothing but a small stack of takeout menus.

I leaned down to pick one up. Turned it over so I could see the name of the restaurant. And then, _then_ I understood.

Oh. Oh, I knew this place because _she_ did.

Yeerks keep bits of their hosts when they leave them. Memories, mostly. Habits, sometimes. It’s not even a fraction of what we have access to when we’re inside their heads, but it’s something. A souvenir, if you want. Something to remember them by. Or a trophy. Depended on who you asked.

I had bits of Ben. I had bits of Steph. I wondered if I would have bits of Marco, too, when this was over, or if the coming reset meant that I wouldn’t get to keep them. I tried not to think about it. I really, really didn't want to think about it.

Memories of other universes are weird, though. There’s overlap, in time and events and not everything lines up perfectly. Sometimes it’s like talking to someone about the past and finding out you have two very different memories of events. Most of what I had from Steph was either shared memory--things we’d experienced together--or useful foreknowledge. The rest--the bits from _before_ , from _elsewhere_ , were fuzzier. Harder to hold on to. Unless they were staring me in the face.

It was just a takeout menu. A pizza place--her favorite pizza place, but still no more significant than that. In a manager’s office in a hotel that she’d never been inside of, had only seen from afar and thought _wow, that’s strange. A bright pink building._ She didn’t even know it was a hotel. 

<Probably don’t deliver anymore,> Marco said.

I smiled, a little. <Probably not.> I folded the menu in half, stuck it under my arm. I didn’t have anywhere to keep it on me. It was fine. Erek would. <Let’s go see if Erek’s scared that Andalite yet.>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This, along with the Las Vegas chapter, was pre-written in 2019 for my friend's birthday. I feel like, if I was really interested in doing the "not telling you where I'm really from" thing--mostly for the meme, if I'm honest--I couldn't really do 41's plot the way that I have, at least not the "world's slowest road trip part," because the urge to come through here, for me and for the characters, is just too great. 
> 
> The place Priton is rifling through is an office in the [Edgewater Beach Hotel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgewater_Beach_Hotel), which is less "bright pink" and more "sunset pink," according to wikipedia, but semantics. The takeout menu is from [Lou Malnati's Pizzeria](https://www.loumalnatis.com/), who make the _best_ deep dish pizza, don't @ me. Also, say what you will about 41's universe, but at least in that universe they never changed the name of the Sears Tower. At least there's one bright spot.
> 
> I don't always mention what day these chapters take place on, mostly because it's usually irrelevant to anyone but me, but this chapter takes place on November 4, 2008. Priton mentions Grant Park here. In the real world, this is what was happening in Grant Park, Chicago, on [November 4, 2008.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_2008_presidential_election_victory_speech)
> 
> Where in the World is GB!Steph? (Not?) - I mean, Priton's probably gotten the message she's trying to send by not going to Chicago, but we've got a theme going here anyway. I used to take day trips to the Michigan Dunes with my dad and sister when I was a kid, which always felt like a mini vacation even though we were there and back the same day, and we were just going to Lake Michigan, but in a different state. Still. Family time! Pittsburgh is home to some of my mom's cousins that I'm particularly close to. And Savannah was/is home to someone I was very close to at the time when GB!Steph left her universe.


	13. Tobias

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Passive suicide ideation.
> 
> I think that's the correct term for what's happening in this chapter? It's a case of "character not caring if they die or not."

_**Priton** _

_Day 3574_

You know, this really wasn't what I wanted to be spending my evening doing. "This" was currently watching exploded bits of the Brooklyn Bridge bob up and down in the East River, and freezing my ass off in the cold January air. 

"Well," I said aloud. "Suppose this could be worse." 

<At least there's still a bridge to stand on,> Marco agreed.

"Could start snowing." I glanced up at the sky. The sun had gone down a few hours ago now, and there was a mostly clear, starless sky above me. That, at least, was highly unlikely at the moment.

It was not the first time the Evolutionist Front had blown something up. They'd been operating for several years at this point, touting their ideology of biological evolution and mutation over enslavement. I was never real clear on how being anti-slavery equated to being pro-terrorism, but I guess what would I know?

It was, at present, probably the quietest this area ever was--possibly had ever been, for as long as there was a city here, maybe. The immediate area had been evacuated, though nothing was on fire now. The ground felt _mostly_ stable under my feet. We were, for the moment, almost alone. I wasn't sure where Erek was at the moment. I'd sent him down to see what was happening on the riverbank, but he hadn't returned yet. From my vantage point, I could see silhouettes of varying sizes and shapes down there still. Probably, I should have gone down myself. Probably, there were things to take care of. Probably.

The thing of it all was, it was getting very, very hard to care anymore.

We were closing in on ten years now. Just a few more months of this. And then... and then I didn't know what was going to happen. To me. To Steph. To any of us. I didn't know if anything I did now--had already done, would do still--even mattered. There'd been no word of Steph in close to two years--nothing but rumors, anyway, and none that had panned out. If she was anywhere--if she was _alive_ \--she was doing an excellent job of hiding. I couldn't decide if it was more selfish to hope that she was out there or if it was more selfish to hope that she wasn't, so instead I settled for just not thinking about it.

I was so very, very tired. And I just wanted to go home.

I leaned against a portion of guardrail that was still standing, resting my chin on my folded arms and watching the shapes below. I could make out an Andalite, a couple Hork-Bajir, an Orff, and a couple human-ish shapes, one of which could have been Erek, if he wasn't being stealthy. I trusted his judgment.

Probably, if I'd been thinking clearly, it might have occurred to me that it was a very bad idea for me to be standing up there all by myself, especially at a moment like this. Powerful visser, all alone, as good as a sitting duck if someone was still hanging around and wanted to take their chances. Because of the weather, I wasn't even dressed properly for morphing out of a dangerous situation if it came up.

But I wasn't thinking clearly. I don't think I'd been thinking clearly for a very, very long time. Not since at least the moment I woke up again in Ben's head, and, if I was being honest with myself, probably for some time before that, too.

After awhile, I sighed, and pushed off the railing. "Well," I said aloud. "Guess it's probably time to get out of here."

<Yeah, probably,> came a voice that, though familiar, definitely didn't belong to Marco.

I spun around, just in time to see the flash of blue before something hit me, hard, in the chest and sending me to my knees almost before I had the chance to even register what was happening. The world tilted around me as, almost instinctively, I pressed my hands to the ground, as if to get up. I wasn't really thinking about what I was doing, only reacting to the sudden jarring shift in perspective. 

<No, no, don't get up on my account.> Something pushed at my shoulder forcefully, and I had little choice but to settle back on my knees. My brain finally registered the "something" as a tail when it moved from my shoulder to my throat, and I froze just as my vision finally cleared enough to see just who I was dealing with. 

<Fuck,> I heard Marco say. That pretty well summed it up.

He looked very much like Ax--or at least, looked like Ax's body had looked the last time I'd seen him. I didn't know a lot of Andalites by sight alone, but Ax's visage was pretty well ingrained in my mind by now.

Of course, this very clearly wasn't Ax.

"Tobias." My voice came out as a wheeze. Fantastic.

<Surprised to see me?> He moved closer, though his tail remained still--the blade pressed uncomfortably close to my neck.

"Not really, no." It was the truth, and probably something I shouldn't be saying--a little too _Priton_ and not enough _Visser Two--_ but there it was anyway. Tobias didn't seem to react to it, at least. "You're, what? Coming out of hiding for an assissination attempt?"

<It's not exactly coming out of hiding if I kill the only person who saw me, is it?> His "tone" was grim. <And you're just sitting out here, all alone. Why wouldn't I take the chance?>

"I don't know," I said, my eyes trained on his tail. "Could think of a couple reasons. Wouldn't really accomplish anything, for one." I wondered if I was actually doing anything useful by talking, or if I was just prolonging the inevitable. Regardless, I felt oddly calm, like it didn't really matter one way or the other. Probably because it didn't. "Or because your friend's here with me."

The tail moved, and I flinched back as Tobias leaned his upper body forward--a weirdly human gesture of intimidation, one that didn't look quite right on an Andalite--and said, <Right. Because Marco wouldn't rather be dead than be a Controller.>

Marco, for his part, didn't comment. Or, at any rate, he was busier trying to think of a way out of this. I was... kind of listening. Mostly, I was thinking that dying right now wasn't the worst case scenario. "Death" and "Controller" weren't the worst fates I could think of.

Tobias jerked suddenly. <What-->

I looked up, in time to see his stalk eyes swiveling frantically around before he jerked again, then stumbled backwards and fell, rather unceremoniously and abruptly, into a heap on bridge.

<What the hell?>

"Uh?" I offered helpfully. Of all the ways for this encounter to end, this was really not one I'd expected. 

I heard an exasperated sigh, and then the air shimmered in front of me, revealing Erek. "I know you have a death wish," he said, "but could you at least not make it _so_ easy for people to come and kill you?" 

"Right." I let him pull me to my feet. "That was... handy timing." I took a tentative step toward the Andalite on ground, ignoring Erek's obvious disapproval. That, at least, was the kind of constant you could rely on. Instead, I peered down at Tobias' unmoving form. "Shit, did you kill him?"

Erek shook his head. "Of course not. Look, he's breathing." He pointed at Tobias' chest, and then at his hindquarters, and sure enough, both were moving. 

"Oh." To be fair, it was not the first time Erek had taken down a would-be assassin. "Did you kill him" was a very reasonable question to be asking. "Well. That's, uh, good." I turned in my spot to look around us. We were still alone, at least for the moment--or at least, as far as I could tell from my current vantage point. "Where'd he come from?"

"I don't know." Erek was looking around, too, and for a moment I thought I saw him frowning before his expression dropped back into his usual impassiveness. 

<We can't leave him here like this, regardless,> Marco pointed out. <Someone's likely to find him here.>

"Right. Okay." I rubbed my hands over my eyes and gave myself a little shake. It didn't do much to get rid of the brain fog, but it didn't matter. There was work to do. That work, still, meant protecting Animorphs--at least as much as was viably possible, anyway. Even ones who tried to kill me. I'd have said that, in fairness, Tobias didn't know it was _me_ he was threatening, but I wasn't sure it'd make much of a difference at this point. "We are getting out of here," I said, as authoritatively as I could manage at the moment. "Erek, stay with him until he comes to. Don't let anyone else find him." I considered something for a moment, then added, "Probably best to not interact." 

Erek nodded. "Should I wake him?"

I frowned. "I mean, I suppose that'd make things faster." I shrugged. "Dealer's choice. Doesn't make a difference to me."

"I mean since we don't know when two hours will be up."

I blinked at him for a long second before it finally dawned on me. "Oh. Uh, that doesn't matter." I gestured down at Tobias. "He's already a nothlit. No morphing clock to worry about."

"I see." Erek tactfully didn't ask how I knew _that,_ about someone no one had seen or heard from for close to a decade. "Duly noted."

* * *

_Day 3652_

Ten years did not fly by so much as drag painfully on, and yet it still managed to startle me when I got up that morning and realized just what day it was. 

I didn't expect it to be any different than every other day. Not really, anyway. There was, logically, no reason for the tenth anniversary to be any different from the ninth or the eighth or any of the others before it.

I didn't expect it, but that didn't mean I was _surprised_. 

I spent most of that day in my Manhattan office. I had many offices, truth be told, scattered around the main Earth hubs, but Manhattan was my favorite--at least as much as anything could be. Mostly, because I spent more time there than anywhere else. It was home base, sort of. I had a whole drawer in my desk dedicated to random garbage--debris remnants of the apocalypse. Contraband junk that would have been useless even in their normal context because most of it was broken. But there weren't a lot of a reminders of home that _weren't_ painfully depressing anymore. 

My preference for New York was kind of morose if I thought about it for too long, but I suppose in the end it didn't really matter. If it all was going to go down the way it was supposed to--if we were all meant to converge on this one spot in time to watch the world burn, one way or the other--well, at least I was on familiar ground.

I didn't expect it on _this_ day, but still. Still, when the report came across my desk for my approval, I couldn't really find it in myself to be surprised.

By pretty much any metric, it was a catastrophically stupid idea. A plan to convert the moon into a kandrona--how the hell, in any normal, rational universe, did a plan like that get all the way to the top for approval without someone realizing that it _might_ be a bad idea to turn the moon into a _miniature sun._ You didn't need to be an expert in astrophysics to figure out what that would be a bad idea. Probably, only someone truly unhinged would even _think_ about it instead of tossing it out the moment they read the proposal.

I guess, if nothing else, I knew exactly what it said about me that it was still sitting on my desk. 

I was sitting there at my desk, data pad in hand, staring down the proverbial Big Red Button, when Erek's knock came at the door. "Enter," I called, absently glancing up as the door slid open and Erek stepped inside my office. I raised my eyebrows at him, expectant.

"Visser," Erek greeted. His tone was purposefully formal. “Two rebels were captured this morning.”

"Yes?" I wasn’t sure if the feeling creeping up in my chest was anticipation or anxiety.

“They were a part of group that included the Animorph, Steph.”

“I see.” I kept my voice level, even as the anxiety mixed with something that might have been relief. “And where is she now?”

“She has apparently abandoned their hideout, but it’s thought that she is still in the city.” That meant pretty much nothing by itself, honestly. “Should a search be started?” 

Translation: Should he make contact again.

“Not yet.” I looked down at the data pad in my hand, frowning. “I think we might want to wait awhile.”

Erek waited for me to continue, but when I didn’t he asked, “Wait for what, Visser?”

I didn't actually know if this would set anything in motion. We'd gone so far off script at this point, the idea that there was anything I could still predict was laughable. All I really wanted was for it to be over--one way or the other. So, I tapped at the report on my data pad, drawing up the function that would allow me to approve it. "I’m sure the right moment will present itself soon enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up feeling like a bit more of a mess than I intended, but after 3 months of staring at this in my WIPs, it's time to move on. Also, I think we may have passed the point, at last, where any of my pre-written stuff is viable. Four years is just too big a gap, apparently. That said, the end of this chapter included some pre-written dialogue, so not all is lost.
> 
> Full disclosure? I specifically made Day 1 of 41 be April 1, 2000, so that I could know exactly how many days there were in ten years. Because, you know, number of leap years varies depending on when you start and stop your time. Which is to say, the end of this chapter takes place on the tenth anniversary of the beginning of Part 12. And you know, in canon, this plot is really, really stupid. Like, world-endingly stupid. I don't know why anyone would think that was a good idea in-universe, canonically, but in Going Back, it's very much Priton going "Yeah, fuck it, just end the world." If any budding supervillains read this and want ideas for how to destroy the planet quickly, I _do_ recommend building a laser to shoot at the moon to turn it into another sun, though. 
> 
> Also, around the time I started posting Going Back to AO3, for some reason youtube kept recommending videos to me about what-if scenarios for if the moon just exploded. Which is weirdly predictive, but okay.
> 
> Next chapter: something slightly different! A change in perspective, if you will.


End file.
